Ramage snapped the nightglass shut, using the metallic double click to break the train of thought. He put the glass back in the binnacle box drawer. Count your blessings, he told himself: he had manoeuvred a frigate and two bomb ketches right up to the enemy's doorstep without them having the slightest suspicion; all they had seen were three gipsies . . .
He had played his cards, rolled his dice, or done whatever gamblers did in London for the latest fashionable game of chance, and now he had to wait for several more hours to see how good his luck was. He had many faults, and impatience was one of the worst of them. The most uncomfortable anyway, because it left him pacing up and down like a caged tiger (or a sheep trapped in a pen), feeling that he could chew the end off a marlinspike or scream like the gulls that swooped astern when the Calypso was under way, hoping that the cook's mate would empty a bucket of garbage and give them a good meal which they would gulp down as they fought on the wing, snatching tasty morsels from each other's beaks.
For the next hour, the ship slept. The ship's company, apart from half the starboard watch, were in their hammocks and the Calypso too seemed to be resting along with the frames and planks and beams whose groaning normally formed a descant to her progress through the water, with the creaking of ropes rendering through blocks and the canvas giving an occasional thump as a random puff of wind lifted a sail for a moment. The noises would return, one by one, as soon as the frigate was under way again, but now there were only the wavelets lapping at the hull as the Calypso swung to her anchor, the wind now ahead and then on one bow or the other. There was the occasional hail as the officer of the deck checked with the lookouts, more to make sure they were awake than to see if they had sighted anything.
Very occasionally, as a small swell wave coming into the bay made the ship roll slightly, the yards overhead creaked, and it was difficult to know if it was the wood protesting faintly or the rope of the halyards.
From time to time the two dogvanes fluttered their feathers, making no more and no less noise than one would expect from a few corks with feathers stuck in them.
It was not often that the Calypso was so short of officers. Wagstaffe and Martin in the Brutus disposed of the second and fourth lieutenants, Kenton and Orsini in the Fructidor of the third and the midshipman. This left the frigate with her first lieutenant and her master. In fact Aitken and Southwick were only too happy to stand watch and watch about because they anticipated their four hours on and four hours off ending in a brisk frigate action.
The day's rest under the pine trees had been very refreshing although it was a strange sensation sleeping amid so much noise. Several years at sea, with only an occasional night spent on shore, left you ill equipped on arriving in Italy for the continuous and rapid buzz of the cicadas which seemed to be hiding by the score in every tree, for the monotonous 'kwark' of some strange bird that regularly, at one-minute intervals, managed to keep up his doleful commentary all through the day, and for the wild boar that grunted and scratched their way busily through the trees, cracking dried branches underfoot and, as far as Ramage could make out, never going round a thicket of bushes if they could blunder through. Ramage had discovered that after he had gone to sleep, the particular man on watch had roused the others more than fifteen times during the day, uncertain whether it was wild boar or a French patrol approaching them through the undergrowth. There had even been the rapid tapping of a woodpecker, quite apart from the buzz, hum and whine of various flying insects, most of which left determined bites and itches, and the tiny varieties of ants, some of which seemed to wield red-hot pokers.
He decided as he began pacing the deck again that there was nothing, judging from the brief stay in the Pineta di Feniglia, that made him want to change a seagoing life for that of a gipsy, hunter or even a landowner: he remembered how, in a house, whether a casetta or a palazzo, there were the mosquitoes and even more vicious but much tinier flying insects called the papatacci, which stung like the jabs of sail needles, as well as ants that invaded furniture. Worse, if you owned a house, was the death-watch beetle that methodically clicked its way (as though its teeth were loose) through the beams and other woodwork, turning the strongest oak to powder and tunnels. Compared with all these land noises, the creaks and groans of a ship under way was faint and agreeable music . . .
He pulled his boatcloak round his shoulders. Timing . . . minutes, perhaps even seconds, would make all the difference between a sufficient, in other words, moderate, success and a disastrous failure. Once again he seemed to be risking too much for too small a prize. Only an ass put down a single stake of a hundred guineas for a nine-to-one chance of winning a single guinea. He seemed to have read somewhere, or heard a seasoned gambler say, that the prize should match the stake and the risk. He supposed some people did in fact find themselves in a position where they could put down a stake on the green baize table with a decent chance of winning a reasonable prize at reasonable odds, and he envied them; but that must be what made a man a professional gambler - a person who would only bet if the odds were right. How nice it must be to have a choice: yes, I will bet now; no, I'll stay out of the game and come in again when the odds seem more favourable.
Ramage never seemed to have that choice; he had to put down his stake and watch the dice roll to a stop, or the card turn over, even when the odds against him were absurdly high. Yet he ought not to grumble; he certainly ought not pity himself, as he was doing at the moment, because in the past he had won when the odds simply did not exist; when there had seemed absolutely no way of winning. In other words, he had been lucky. Gamblers who relied too often on their luck instead of calculating the odds usually ended up ruined; captains of ships of war who relied on luck to bring victory instead of careful planning usually ended up dead, taking many of their ship's company with them.
Steady, he told himself. He had made a plan and worked out the odds, and the odds seemed no worse than usual, perhaps even better. The only luck he needed (the element of chance that was bound to enter into even the best of plans) was that the wind should not drop. The direction mattered little; it just had to blow, anything from a gentle breeze to half a gale ... a tramontana from across the mountains to the north, a lebeccio from the west, bringing rain, a sirocco from the south, hot and searing with thick cloud, shredding nerves and nearly always lasting three days, or a maestrale from the north-west - just let there not be a calm, which stopped any movement. With the settled conditions at the moment, a clear sky, the stars sparkling, a nip in the air, and the hint of dew, with only the very slightest occasional swell wave, there could be calm an hour after sunrise. The usual sea breeze that set in about ten o'clock in the morning might decide to have a rest for the day . . .
A bulky shadow loomed up beside him and Ramage recognized Southwick.
"Just that one fishing boat still working over towards Talamone, sir. Everyone else seems to have gone to bed."
"Very wise," Ramage said cheerfully. "There isn't much to stay up for, unless you're one of the King's officers."
"I hope all those dam' French officers are staying up late in Porto Ercole," Southwick said, his sniff indicating that he was making a joke. "Let's hope the navy is entertaining the army and that they all drink too much, so that in the morning they all have dreadful headaches ..."
Southwick always amused Ramage by making "dam' French" sound like one word. "If it's up to that artillery colonel, they will. Argentario wine is rather special and the colonel was certainly drinking it like water when we met him in Orbetello and so were his officers."