Southwick turned to call down to the boat, and at that moment he remembered that the man at the tiller coming back had not been Jackson, who as coxswain had steered the boat to the beach.
"Jackson - ahoy there, Jackson!"
There was a curious silence. Men who had been stowing the oars along the edges of the thwarts seemed to redouble their efforts and make more noise.
"Stafford?"
"Aye aye, sir?"
"Where's Jackson?"
"Dunno, sir; 'e ain't 'ere."
"When did you see him last?"
"Well, sir, it's dark and . . ."
"He was at the tiller when we landed at the beach, wasn't he?"
"I think so, sir."
"But not when we shoved off?"
"I couldn't rightly say, sir," the Cockney seaman answered, obviously being evasive.
Southwick thought for a moment and then snapped: "Is Rossi down there?"
For a few moments half a dozen voices inquired: "Is Rossi here?", all of them with the assumed innocence of choirboys.
Aitken tugged Southwick's sleeve, pulling him away from the bulwarks.
"Jackson and Rossi must have gone after the Captain. I saw them talking this afternoon. What the devil they think they can do, just the two of them, I don't know. I can only hope they don't do anything silly and get the Captain caught."
Southwick sniffed his disapproval of the whole thing. "I proposed to the Captain this afternoon that he took Rossi with him. Rossi is not only Italian but he has his wits about him: Mr Ramage refused. He said that Martin and Orsini were just right. He'll be furious when he knows he has Jackson and Rossi as well."
"Well, there's nothing we can do about it now," Aitken said. "If the Captain had wanted them with him he'd have told them. He'll probably make them sit among the juniper bushes until he's ready to come back. The mosquitoes will make them look like prickly pears ..."
After leaping from the bow of the cutter, Ramage, Martin and Paolo ran up the thirty yards of sloping sand until they reached the first of the juniper bushes and then threaded their way towards the pines, their feet slipping and sliding, their balance uncertain after more than a year at sea without going on shore for more than an hour at a time.
The pine forest which ran the length of the causeway, from the mainland to Argentario, suddenly loomed up, a black wall of sound ticking and buzzing with the noise of insects and punctuated by the occasional grunts of wild pigs snuffling among the pine cones. All we need now, Ramage thought to himself, is to be charged by a wild boar and get cut to pieces by those sharp tusks.
The keen smell of the pine leaves, the way the pine needles thick on the ground were holding the sand together and stopping it squeaking underfoot, the spreading carpet of long green fingers of the fico degli Ottentoti plant, trying to hook round ankles and bring a running man sprawling on his face ... Ramage remembered it all. The damp heat, the feeling that heat from the day's sun was being stored for the night among the pines, making the air seem almost solid, whereas out at the ship it was fresh, with even a slight chill . . .
Once they were inside the first of the pines, as though they had penetrated the outer wall of a maze, Ramage called: "Right, stop here." The three stood panting, all of them surprised at the way the muscles in their shins pulled, showing how little actual walking they did in the Calypso.
"From what I could see from the cutter, the mainland is only fifty yards or so along this way," Ramage said, pointing to the north-east. "Then we have a few hundred yards to walk along the via Aurelia and we should find Orbetello on our right. The causeway to Porto Ercole will be farther along, also on the right."
Martin said: "Where do you expect to find the French army officers, sir?"
Ramage felt a sudden irritation that the fourth lieutenant should now casually ask a question which he had himself been trying to answer for most of the afternoon and all the evening. Paolo had obviously considered it too. "Boh!" he said, in that Italian expression which has a thousand meanings. Ramage was interested to hear what young Paolo had to say: he was Italian and he was shrewd and far more likely to understand the Latin mind than Ramage.
"Well, Orsini, where will I find 'em?"
"Orbetello," Orsini said promptly. "The town is fortified and will have inns. French officers do not like tents. I doubt if Porto Ercole has more than a tavern. Probably only a cantina, where the soldiery can get drunk and buy wine in jugs. The officers will stay in Orbetello until it is time to board the frigates. With their women, no doubt," he added bitterly, knowing that the women were likely to be Italian and therefore, in his straightforward code of conduct, traitors. "The troops will be in tents near the main road."
Just as Ramage thought he heard the squeaking of sand, a twig snapped loudly. The three of them stood silently, Martin expecting French soldiers while Ramage and Orsini listened for the grunting and snuffling of a wild boar. Instead they heard Rossi whispering hoarsely: "Shall we give a hail, Jacko? Just a -"
"No!" Ramage's voice cut through the darkness, and he almost laughed aloud as the sound of more breaking twigs showed that both Rossi and Jackson were startled enough to take at least one step backwards.
He nearly laughed, but it would have been a humourless laugh. The night turned cold as he considered that, instead of three gipsies, of whom one was a dumb half-wit and the others spoke perfect Italian, he was now in effect at the head of a boarding party: five men would not be able to move where three gipsies could walk openly, drawing attention to themselves with a flute and collecting money and listening to gossip.
"Jackson, Rossi, come over here. Quietly." He heard a few more twigs breaking, some muffled cursing from Rossi, and then silence. Then Jackson whispered, and Ramage could picture his shamefaced look.
"Where are you, sir?"
"Here," Ramage said quietly.
A few more twigs snapped and Ramage thought he could hear the carpet of pine bristles creaking, but he was determined not to make it easy for two men who had not only disobeyed orders but simply ignored their duty, which was to return to the Calypso in the cutter.
"Here," Ramage repeated sarcastically. "You sound like a herd of water-buffalo."
Then the two men were facing him in the darkness and Ramage could just distinguish the plump Rossi from the lean Jackson. "Well?" he said to Jackson with deliberate cruelty, "decided to 'run' after all these years, eh? And you, Rossi?"
The sudden accusation of desertion left Jackson speechless. There were only three ways of leaving one of the King's ships in wartime, and they were marked down in the muster book with one of three abbreviations - "D", for discharged to another ship which was usually named; "D.D.", for discharged dead, normally noted down without any explanation although the cause of death could range from yellow fever to a fatal fall from one of the yards; or "R", for "run", or deserted, and the penalty for which was anything from several hundred lashes with a cat-o'-nine-tails to being hanged. In wartime the Navy was always so short of men that deserters were rarely hanged if they were caught.
Rossi, waiting impatiently for Jackson to explain but finding him staying silent, said hurriedly: "We came to help you, sir. You see, we -"
"Help?" Ramage interrupted angrily. "If I thought I needed you I'd have given you orders. What am I supposed to do now you're here? Hold your hands as though you were two little boys caught stealing grapes?"
"Well, sir," Jackson muttered, finally realizing that what had seemed a good idea on board Calypso was completely impractical now they had actually landed, "we thought you needed some protection, and with Rossi to do any talking . . ."