As men came running up the quarterdeck ladder with hammocks over their shoulders Ramage called to the boatswain, who was one of them, "Undo the hammock lashings and put in shot, then lash them up into bags, so the shot won't roll all over the place. Stow 'em as far aft as you can."
While the men dropped the shot into the hammocks and joked as they hurried to make up the bags, some of them recognizing their own hammocks by the numbers painted on them and groaning at the thought of scrubbing out the blacking from the shot that was already making the flax look like zebra skin, Ramage was conscious out of the corner of his eye that Southwick seemed to be doing a jig just forward of the binnacle.
"Well," Ramage demanded. "What's this - the beginning of the Helston Floral Dance?"
"Could be, could be, sir," the master said, grinning as he pointed to the slate. "We've caught up a hundred yards - leastways, what I mean is we're now overhauling them." He snatched up his telescope and after examining the Furet said: "Take a look, sir. Three heads along the taffrail, all officers, like starlings on a bough. The third one is using a quadrant. I can almost hear him reporting that the angle is greater . . . and they don't know why . . ."
As soon as the seamen aft put down their shot they returned to their guns, all taking a good look forward as they went down the quarterdeck ladder. Normally when serving at the guns their view forward was limited by the after side of the fo'c'sle, but now, probably for the first time in their lives, they had had a good look at the opposition; a captain-on-the-quarterdeck eye view, Ramage thought, just as he realized that the weight of a hundred men was now moving forward again, leaving only the roundshot. Too late to worry now . . .
Guns loaded and run out on both sides; the starboard side manned for the moment. It would be nice to have enough men to fight both sides at once but he doubted if there was a ship in the navy with a full complement that could do that. Anyway, the Calypso's men were now so well trained that if he had the chance to get both broadsides fired into the French, the enemy would think both sides were manned.
He would attack the Frenchman's larboard side. With the wind from the north-west and on this course, it meant that if the Frenchman tried to bolt he would have to turn away to leeward - and the Calypso would be there to stop him.
By now Aitken was back on the quarterdeck, looking with amusement at the white bags covering the larboard after corner of the quarterdeck.
"Looks as though it's done the trick, sir," he commented. "But it's going to be a pounding match once we get alongside."
"Pound her well and then board her. We're short of officers to lead boarding parties."
"Aye, sir: Wagstaffe, Kenton, Martin, Orsini - we could do with them now."
The Furet's hull was entirely black: the only colours were the dull buff paint used on the masts and yards, and the inside of her gunports, which were red: that was traditional. And the name on the transom. The Revolution, Ramage thought, seemed to be against colour. Perhaps if equality was a colour, it was black, while fraternity was buff. The French Navy seemed to have run out of colours when they came to liberty - unless you include the blood red used inside the gunports . . . The Royal Navy issued no more colours than that; but neither did their writing paper have "Liberté" and "Egalité" printed on the top. It was hard to imagine their Lordships in the Admiralty administering a navy with a tree of liberty planted in the forecourt in Whitehall.
He stopped his train of thought for a moment and reached for his telescope. It was curious the amount of water suddenly flowing over the side from the Furet's scuppers and scattering into droplets like smoke as the wind caught it. They must be wetting the decks to put down more sand in anticipation of battle. There was enough heat in the sun to dry the planking very quickly, but one would have thought a few buckets of water slung over them from a tub would be enough: with this amount of water the sand must be sluicing over the side too.
So much water, he thought, putting the telescope to his eye, that they must be using the deckwash pumps. No, it could not be that: both ships were sailing too fast for deckwash pumps to draw, even if lead piping went down the side to the water instead of canvas hose.
Hell fire! The water was not just a spray now; it was running in a stream through the lee side scuppers - in spurts, rather, like blood pulsing when a man lost a leg. The Calypso's pump dale was also on the lee side, a wooden trough which carried the bilge water over the side from the great chain pump.
It must be the chain pump. He pictured many men turning the big cranked handle to rotate the sprocket wheel which turned the endless chain and brought each leather disk up the pipe casing with its quota of water, emptying it into the trough of the pump dale as it came over the top and started its downward journey again.
Then he cursed himself for his stupidity: the French captain was trying to lighten his ship in just the way Ramage himself had considered starting fresh-water casks, throwing a few guns over the side and jettisoning a couple of the boats. Very sensibly the French captain had decided to sacrifice the fresh water, so that now there were thousands of gallons of water in the Furet's bilge which his men were busy pumping out. The Calypso's bilges were pumped every morning, on Ramage's orders; not because she had a leak but because water left in the bilge soon began to stink. He had been in some ships of the line commanded by men who should know better whose bilges smelled like the Fleet Ditch at a midsummer noon. Anyway the chain pump leathers wanted wetting daily if they were not to dry and crack.
Southwick looked round at him and nodded cheerfully. His latest reading with the quadrant showed the Calypso still gaining. "That ship is about five hundred yards ahead of us - from our jibboom to his taffrail, sir."
"It's still going to take a long time to make up that distance," Ramage said gloomily. "Half an hour, anyway. Still, the men can have their dinner; it's long overdue."
It was as if the Furet was towing the Calypso, Ramage thought irritably; despite his recent gain, the distance hardly changed now - not perceptibly, anyway; just two identical frigates surging southwards with a quartering wind, one flying the Tricolour, the other British colours. The Calypso was by far the smarter, Ramage thought; but paint did not make a ship fast nor did scrubbed decks stop barnacles and weeds growing on the bottom. No doubt the copper sheathing was by now wafer-thin in places, no longer keeping the growth away, and it was equally certain that many thin sheets would have ripped off, leaving only the stubby sheathing nails sticking out like the heads of pins pressed into a pin cushion.
He would give anything to see the face of the Furet's captain, just to know what the man looked like. The Frenchman knew his business, that much was certain. Ramage would bet that the fellow had learned his profession under the old navy and, having no aristocratic attachments (and no enemies to accuse him falsely), had received well-merited promotion. Ramage felt that if he could catch a glimpse of the man's face he might be able to guess what his next move was likely to be, like a prizefighter watching his opponent's eyes for a warning of the next punch.
He lifted his telescope and saw the three heads facing aft at the taffrail, obviously watching the Calypso racing along in the Furet's wake. In the Tropics one would expect to see flying fish making their graceful waltzes over the wavetops, but they were nearly twenty degrees too far north . . .
Suddenly men were climbing up the Furet's starboard shrouds, going to the stunsail booms at the ends of the yards. Perhaps the French captain knew a trick to make them draw better. Curious that so much water was still pouring through the scuppers on the lee side - the men working the pumps must be getting tired.