Ramage called to Jackson and told him to hold the watch.
‘For the next four minutes read out the remaining minutes and half minutes starting…now!’
The Kathleens were silent, all looking ahead at the squat stern of the frigate. Hell! The barrels of the aftermost broadside guns began to foreshorten, and now Ramage could see farther along her starboard side. She was yawing and if the wind and sea continued to swing her round a few more degrees her aftermost three or four guns would be able to fire into the Kathleen. Then slowly she paid off and the gun barrels lengthened.
The wind began to strengthen – he felt it on his face – and the cutter picked up speed, pitching rhythmically, and the boom rising slightly as the wind bellied the mainsail. Six knots now? No time for another cast of the log.
Tiny puffs of smoke along the frigate’s taffrail, barely glimpsed before the wind dispersed them, and faint popping noises – musket fire – at that range a nuisance but no more.
‘Three minutes and thirty seconds,’ said Jackson.
Ramage guessed the distance at six hundred yards and signalled to Southwick. At once the seamen began paying out the rest of the grass warp and the jolly boat dropped farther astern, the warp floating on the water like a long thin snake. Southwick swore as a bight of the rope twisted into a figure of eight, knowing a sudden jerk on the boat might shift the casks and snap the portfires, exploding the powder prematurely, but a seaman untwisted it before the weight on the boat came on.
Many more puffs of smoke along the frigate’s taffrail
‘Three minutes,’ Jackson chanted gloomily.
Two stern chase guns were poking out through the ports like accusing black fingers. If they hadn’t fired by now they never would – the Spaniards must have decided that with the rolling it was a waste of powder.
‘How much more to run?’
‘Nearly all gone,’ Southwick called. ‘Five fathoms or so left… There, that’s the lot. Steady lads, take the strain now. All hundred fathoms out, sir!’
So the jolly boat, the explosive red herring, was towing astern on the end of a two-hundred-yard rope tail.
‘Two minutes and thirty seconds,’ said Jackson, excitement beginning to show in his voice.
About four hundred yards, Ramage noted.
‘Mr Southwick! Overhaul the mainsheet. Stand by to bear up. Not a moment to lose when I give the word.’
Yards mattered now as he sailed the Kathleen right down to the frigate’s starboard quarter, carefully staying just enough to windward so the wind would blow the jolly boat down to the frigate when, fifty yards away, he turned the Kathleen round to larboard to head back the way she came for a moment – giving the tail a flick, in fact – and hove-to. Then, stopped with her stern to the frigate and the grass warp floating in her wake in a huge crescent, if he’d judged it correctly the wind would slowly blow the boat down towards the frigate, and if the portfires burned true… If, if, if!
‘Two minutes, sir,’ said Jackson, his voice revealing tension for the first time.
Spanish officers were standing among the men with muskets on the taffrail – he could distinguish their uniforms. Not even a stump of the mizzen left; it must have been a fantastic squall that hit her – or else, for all that new paint, her rigging was rotten.
Yet again Ramage glanced astern at the boat. She was towing beautifully, bow riding high but the stern not squatting so much that water slopped up over the transom. No sign of even a whisp of smoke: he swore – had the portfires gone out? A quick glance with the telescope did not reassure him. More popping from ahead and a man at the second carronade on the Kathleen’s larboard side screamed with pain and another dropped silently to the deck. Ramage stared curiously, trying to recognize the sprawled figure.
‘One and a half minutes!’ Jackson said.
Startled at the realization he had only ninety seconds left, Ramage looked again at the frigate. She had suddenly become enormous and even as he shouted to Southwick to put the helm down it seemed impossible for the Kathleen’s enormously long bowsprit to miss swiping the frigate’s starboard quarter as she swung round to larboard.
With all that preparation, Ramage swore to himself, he’d let a wounded man divert his attention long enough to wreck the whole bloody manoeuvre. He rubbed the scar on his brow, fighting back the panic trying to get him in its grip.
For a moment as the tiller went over there seemed total confusion on the Kathleen’s deck; one group of seamen sheeted in the mainsail at the run; others hardened in jib and foresail sheets and both sails filled with a bang as the cutter’s bow swung to larboard and brought them out from under the sheltering lee of the mainsail. The sudden weight of wind in both sails tried to push her bow off to starboard and the quartermaster ran to help the two men hold the heavy tiller.
‘One minute to go,’ bawled Jackson, dodging round the busy men as he tried to stay within earshot of Ramage and yet still keep an eye on the watch.
He’d overshot by – oh God! As the Kathleen’s turn brought the frigate’s great squat transom flashing down the starboard side, Ramage found himself looking up at a row of faces, some half-hidden by muskets, and just had time to notice several of the men were wriggling and jabbing with their elbows to get enough room to aim as they were jostled by some officers trying to peer down at the cutter.
Little flashes of flame, puffs of smoke and that ridiculous popping. More shouts of pain on the Kathleen’s deck and he was conscious of falling men. A glance back showed that by some miracle the jolly boat seemed to be in roughly the right position. Musket balls whined close in ricochet. Every musket seemed to be aimed at him. The frigate swung round to the quarter as the Kathleen continued turning; then she was astern.
‘Mr Southwick! Back the jib and let fly the foresail sheets! Keep the helm hard down!’
Swiftly the men hauled the jib to windward so it tried to push the cutter’s bow to starboard but was balanced by the mainsail and rudder trying to force the bow round to larboard, like two children of equal weight at either end of a seesaw. The Kathleen began to slow down. As she stopped she began to roll, the noise of rushing water ceased, and the popping of muskets was much louder.
Jackson shouted ‘Thirty seconds!’ just as Ramage looked for the jolly boat.
The wind was drifting it swiftly, the drag of the grass warp turning it broadside on to lie parallel with the frigate and perhaps fifty yards away. Ramage wasn’t sure how it happened, but the boat was in exactly the right position, the warp linking it to the Kathleen making an almost perfect crescent superimposed on the smooth water of her wake.
‘Time!’ bawled Jackson, and nothing happened.
For several moments hope clouded judgement in Ramage’s mind; after all that, he thought wearily, surely at least one of the portfires must be still alight, but he felt too sick with disappointment to look again with the telescope for a wisp of smoke. Fifteen minutes was the maximum burning time for a portfire, and fifteen minutes, sixteen by now, had elapsed.
Southwick was steadily cursing in a low monotone; Edwards, white-faced, watched the jolly boat as if stunned; Gianna stood unconcerned, looking astern at the frigate curiously; and Ramage, conscious of yet another fusillade of musketry, was deciding he’d better get the Kathleen under way again before the sharpshooters picked them all off.
It was only then he registered that Gianna was standing near him amid the thudding and whining of musket balls and instinctively gave her a violent shove that sent her flat on her face, hard up against the taffrail. At the same moment Edwards clutched his arm, obviously hit by a shot and Ramage heard a curious clang beside his leg.
Suddenly a blinding flash from the direction of the jolly boat was followed by a deep, muffled explosion, and a blast of air. The flash turned into a billowing mushroom of smoke, and jagged pieces of wood – the remains of the boat – curved up slowly through the air in precise parabolas before spattering down on to a sea across which concentric waves rolled outwards from where the boat had been, like the ripples from a rock flung into a pond.
‘Half that amount of powder would do the job for you, sir,’ Edwards said quietly.
‘Yes. And I hope our friends over there haven’t missed the point.’
‘The bang was a bit late though, wasn’t it, sir?’ Jackson said with a grin.
‘Aye,’ said Edwards, ‘but if you’d been a friend of mine you’d have flogged the glass.’
Ramage laughed rather too loudly. Flogging the glass – turning the half-hour glass a few minutes too soon to shorten a watch on deck – was an old trick.
‘Never mind, Edwards, it worked perfectly.’
Edwards gave Ramage an odd look as though he was drunk and had difficulty in focusing his eyes, nodded and collapsed at his feet, still clutching an arm from which blood spurted. In a moment Gianna was kneeling beside the man ripping away the sleeve.
Ramage was just going to climb down the Kathleen’s side to the waiting boat when Jackson pointed at his sword and offered him a cutlass. Ramage pulled the sword and scabbard out of the belt and flung it down. That explained the curious clang – a musket shot had hit and bent the blade and ripped away part of the scabbard. Still, better to be unarmed when boarding an etiquette-conscious Spaniard than have a cutlass, which was a seaman’s weapon, and Ramage waved it away. The fact that he boarded completely unarmed would not be lost on the Spanish.
The boat shoved off and Jackson looked like a lancer in the stern sheets, tiller in one hand and in the other a boarding pike to which a white cloth had been lashed as a flag of truce.
The men rowed briskly and as smartly as if going alongside a flagship, and soon the boat was under the lee of La Sabina. As Ramage looked up at her, realizing it was not going to be easy to board because she was rolling so much, he was surprised to see water running out of the scuppers and down the ship’s side. How on earth could she be getting sea on deck?
While Jackson was giving the last orders which would bring the boat alongside, Ramage looked back at the Kathleen and felt his confidence ebbing fast as he saw how tiny the cutter appeared, even though she was hove-to barely a couple of hundred yards away. From the deck of the frigate she must seem about as threatening as a harbour bumboat.
The bowman hooked on with a boat-hook and Ramage jammed his hat on his head, waited a moment until the boat rose on a crest, and jumped on to one of the side steps – the thick battens fixed parallel, one above the other, up the ship’s side. The Spaniards had been thoughtful enough to let the manropes fall so that he had handholds.
He hurried up the first three battens in case the frigate rolled to leeward and a wave soaked his feet, then slowed up to avoid arriving at the gangway hot and breathless. While climbing he decided that if he did not reveal he spoke Spanish he might learn a lot from unguarded remarks. If none of them spoke English – which was unlikely – he’d use French. Faces lining the bulwark were watching him, and as Jackson shoved off with the boat, leaving him alone on board, for a moment Ramage felt a loneliness verging on panic; he was away from the ship with whose command he had been entrusted; he was – and now he had to admit it – completely disobeying orders; and he was at the mercy of the Spaniards. If they chose to ignore the accepted behaviour governing flags of truce and make him a prisoner (or, more likely, a hostage) Southwick was unlikely to have the skill to drift down another explosion boat and successfully blow off the frigate’s stern even if he had the nerve to sacrifice his captain’s life.
Well, it was too late to fret about a situation he couldn’t change. But as he climbed he realized it was a situation he could have changed.
At last his head was level with the deck at the entry port and he looked neither to the right nor the left as he passed through until he was standing on the gangway. His hat was straight and surprisingly he suddenly felt nonchalant, as if he was walking into the Long Room at Plymouth. With the memory of the size of the Kathleen only seconds old, he was almost light-headed with the ludicrousness of what he was about to demand.
A Spanish officer to his right straightened himself up after an elaborate bow, hat clasped in his right hand over his left breast.
Ramage returned a polite but less deep bow.
‘Teniente. Francisco de Pareja at your service,’ the officer said in good English.
‘Lieutenant Ramage, of His Britannic Majesty’s cutter Kathleen, at your service. I wish to speak with your captain.’
‘Of course, Teniente. Please come this way. My captain asks me to tender his regrets that he speaks no English.’
‘If you would be kind enough to translate,’ Ramage said politely, ‘I am sure we shall all understand each other perfectly.’
‘Thank-you. I am at your service.’
Without letting his eyes wander too obviously, Ramage saw the frigate’s deck was indeed swept clean. The remains of the masts, like stumps of clumsily felled trees, were monuments to a fatal combination of a powerful squall and bad seamanship. But however long and strong the squall had blown it failed to remove the usual smell of boiled fish, stale cooking oil and garlic which permeated most Spanish ships, and there was a smell like a bonfire just put out by a rainstorm. Ah! Suddenly he realized why there was water running from the frigate’s scuppers: some of the burning wreckage from the exploding boat had come on board and started several small fires… He mentally noted that a few signal rockets and blue lights put on top of the powder next time might yield good dividends.
Waiting aft by the big double wheel, but deliberately looking away, stood a portly man of perhaps forty, resplendent in a uniform almost entirely covered in gold braid. The thick jowls hanging over the stock betrayed a professional gourmet. The pinkness of the face, the slackness of the mouth, protuberant belly, shifting and watery eyes that could not refuse food… Ramage guessed the Spanish captain regarded his cook as the most important member of the ship’s company.
Deep bows, exchange of names – the portly man was Don Andreas Marmion – more bows, and both Ramage and Marmion turned to Pareja, waiting for the other to begin. Suddenly Ramage realized he had a chance of seizing the initiative and announced with all the confidence of a man stating something obvious and indisputable: