"How far, do you reckon?"
Kenton's voice was harsh. It was hard to guess. He had not heard the Brutus's sails flapping as she luffed up to let go the anchor, and he could just see her out of the corner of his eye, seemingly fixed on the starboard beam not a hundred yards away.
"About a cable, I reckon, sir."
Two hundred yards . . . how the devil was he expected to translate in his head a few seconds of arc measured by the quadrant into yards along the surface of the sea? That was for people like Southwick, who could work out mathematical problems in the same way that a child's ball goes down a staircase - it starts at the top and bounces down, step by step, until it reaches the bottom and stops. And that, ecco, is the answer . . . Southwick made it all seem very logical when he was explaining it, but the minute he stopped explaining and asked for an explanation, the ball seemed to want to bounce upwards, or miss three steps . . .
"A hundred yards to go, sir," Paolo said firmly, but realized that in addition to his hands trembling, his knees felt shaky too. He was not frightened, but they should not have given this job to someone who did not understand mathematics. "Twenty-five yards, sir!"
Everything happened at once: he saw the Brutus turn into the wind, sails napping; Kenton shouted at the helmsman; seamen let halyards go at the run and the flying jib sheets flogged for a moment before the sail began sliding down the stay. Porto Ercole, the frigates and the big fort up on the hill, Filippo, which seemed to be watching them like a crouching animal, suddenly slid to starboard. He turned quickly for a last check – yes, the turn into the wind meant the ketch was still sailing along the 2,000 yard radius from the frigates, so by the time she lost way and the anchor cable began to run, the distance would still be exactly right.
Accidente, his hands were trembling even more now, and the muscles in his knees seemed to be turning to water, and yet he had made no mistake; he had done exactly what Kenton had told him; the ship would be anchored exactly right. He put the quadrant down on the binnacle box and caught Kenton's eye. The third lieutenant winked, and Paolo saw that he too was holding a quadrant - he had checked at the last moment.
"Good lad," Kenton said. "Now get forward. I want that spring clapped on the anchor cable as soon as we've veered ten fathoms."
These French galliots were clumsy things, but one could hardly expect too much; they were little more than heavily built boxes which in peacetime would probably be plying between places like Calais and Havre de Grace with cargoes of potatoes or casks of salt fish; perhaps even carrying stone, from somewhere like Caen, which was needed for building a new breakwater at Boulogne. Stone-blocks, so Rossi said, were a cargo which most seamen dreaded. The great weight for a small bulk meant that masters tended to overload and if the ship sprang a leak it was usually impossible to shift the heavy blocks down in the hold to get at the source to make repairs. After a few hours' threshing to windward with a stone-block cargo, Rossi had said, and his experience had been in carrying marble from Carrara, even the toughest sailor began to imagine that with all the violent pitching the blocks were lifting and dropping on to the hull like an enormous mallet, forcing the planking . . .
"Yes," he said hurriedly as Jackson reported that ten fathoms of cable had been veered, the anchor was holding, and they were all ready to clap on the spring.
Paolo looked round at the spring, a heavy rope which came in over the bow but which had been led aft right along the starboard side outside of all the rigging, secured temporarily with lashings to stop it dropping into the water, and coming in over the starboard quarter.
"Right," he said to Stafford, Rossi and two other seamen, who were waiting at the bow, just beyond the mortar. "Secure the spring. A rolling hitch, of course," he added airily.
"Of course, sir," Jackson said politely, and Paolo blushed. It had not been necessary to tell them what knot to use, but at least they now knew that he knew, and come to think of it that was about the only reason for saying it.
The five men seized the spring, a rope of perhaps a quarter of the diameter of the cable, and quickly secured it to the anchor cable with the rolling hitch, Jackson using a length of line to seize the end to the cable. "Always worth doing, sir," he explained to Paolo, "just in case the rolling hitch takes it into its head to slip."
He turned aft and called to Kenton: "Spring is made up, sir; shall we prepare to veer?"
"Aye, veer enough to take the strain."
Paolo turned to give the men the order but Jackson's glance made him pause. The American was staring along the starboard side, obviously trying to warn him about something - the lashing!
"Cut the lashings . . ." He watched as the men went along the ship's side, slashing at the lines with their knives, so that heavy rope dropped down into the water with a splash.
"Right - Jackson, you and Stafford stand by to get the hitch over the side; Rossi and you two, veer away on the cable . . ."
The seamen knew well enough what to do, but it was part of a midshipman's job and training to give orders. Jackson and Stafford stood by at the rolling hitch, the knot making a bulky lump in the anchor cable which, in the bomb ketch, went over the bow through a fairlead in the bulwark, not through a hawse hole, so that if they were not careful the knot would jam.
Jackson nodded to Rossi and the Italian seaman let the anchor cable suddenly go slack; as it ran out through the fairlead Jackson and Stafford pushed upwards and then pulled on the spring so that the knot flicked out and disappeared over the bow. Rossi snubbed up the anchor cable to stop any more running out.
Paolo turned aft and called to Kenton: "Spring made up and ready for veering, sir!"
Kenton, who had been watching the Brutus as well as inspecting Monte Filippo with his telescope, said: "Very well, leave a couple of men there to veer the cable and bring the rest of your party aft to handle the spring."
Kenton had to admit that he had not liked the idea of leaving Orsini to check the mast angle and distance off when they anchored: his complete inability to understand mathematics was a joke in the Calypso, although fortunately he could handle a quadrant well enough, and even Southwick had to admit that he had never found the lad make a mistake in the actual sight.
The youngster had been cool enough; he had stood there watching the centre frigate through his quadrant eyepiece as though admiring the view, and when asked he had given quick and accurate estimates of the remaining distance. Kenton knew the Captain would be pleased to hear about that.
Now the Fructidor was anchored in precisely the right place, and the spring was on the cable. He suddenly had a slightly absurd picture of what they were doing to the ship. Or, since this was the first time, trying to do. The anchor and cable over the bow was as if a bull was tied to a tree (the anchor) by a rope through the ring in its nose. Then a thinner line was tied to its tail and taken to the rope and secured well in front of the bull's nose. By heaving on the line to the tail (the spring that went to the Fructidor's stern) the bull could be turned round to make it face a different direction.
Fortunately, the Fructidor was more tractable than a bull which, not unreasonably, would object to being pulled round by its tail. Now all that remained to do was veer away more anchor cable and spring so that the hitch holding the spring was further ahead, to give more leverage. Then, by heaving in on the cable Fructidor's stern would come round.