Ramage shook his head. "He won't be twenty for another couple of years."
"Well, we'll do something about him later. Now, what had Señor Perez to tell you?"
Ramage repeated the Spaniard's words as near verbatim as his memory allowed, so that he was near the end of his report when he came to the rumour - he carefully repeated Perez's warning about it - that Villeneuve might have new orders directing him to the Mediterranean.
The chance that his quarry might bolt either to the north or the south did not seem to bother Nelson. "Twenty ships, Ramage, I shan't be satisfied with less than twenty ships!"
"Leave one for me, sir," Ramage said jokingly.
"There'll be enough for everyone," Nelson said, sitting down in his armchair, "but no frigates in the line of battle, Ramage; one broadside from a 74 will turn your ship into floating wreckage . . .
"Signals - I want you frigates to repeat my signals quickly: if you do that, you'll have done your job. That's what frigates are for, when serving with a fleet. On detached service - which you are used to - well, that's a different matter. But with a fleet, keeping a sharp lookout and quick signals!"
"Yes, sir," Ramage said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ramage sat at his desk, with the Calypso hove-to in a very light breeze five miles off the Fuerte de La Cortadura on the outskirts of Cadiz. The sun was occasionally breaking through high, watery clouds.
He pulled across his journal and dipped his quill in the ink. Blockading (or keeping a watch on an enemy port) must be the dullest job in the service, apart from acting as guardship at somewhere like Plymouth or Portsmouth: for days you just stared at the same views. Days, weeks and perhaps months . . .
He flipped over some earlier pages. Sunday, 28th September: the day they joined the fleet, and next day was Nelson's birthday. On the next night he and Paolo had gone on shore to find Señor Perez, and on 1st October he had taken the Calypso out to find Nelson and report on what the Spaniard had to say ... Since then the Calypso and Euryalus had kept a close watch on Cadiz and Rota (close enough to see what was happening on board the French and Spanish ships hiding in Cadiz), with Thomas Dundas's frigate Naiad and Thomas Bladen-Capel's Phoebe close in. Several miles out - close enough to distinguish flag signals - was William Prowse with the frigate Sinus, with William Parker in the Amazon frigate, the schooner Pickle and the Weazle lying further out, over the horizon. Then, making up the rest of the links out to the fleet, were three ships of the line, acting as frigates because of the shortage - the Defence with Captain George Hope in command, the 64-gun Agamemnon (the first ship of the line that Nelson had ever commanded as a young post-captain) with Captain Berry, one of the few who knew Lord Nelson well, and finally, in sight of the fleet, the Mars and the Duff clan.
The entries in the journal reflected the dullness of the task: "5th October - anchored in Cadiz Roads, no movement among ships of the Combined Fleet... 10 October - cruising between Castillo de San Sebastián (the western tip of Cadiz city) and the Fuerte de La Cortadura . . . 15th October - patrolling the Canal Principal off Cadiz harbour: 35 tons of water remaining . . . 18th October - hove-to in light winds off Castillo de San Sebastián, opened one cask of salt beef, six pieces missing ..."
And then frequent entries were: "Ship's company employed ATSR" (the abbreviation for "As the service required") . . . "Ship's company exercised at general quarters" (which meant at the guns) . . . "Topmen exercised at shifting foretopsail" ("shifting" meant sending down the topsail and then hoisting it up again and bending it back on to the yard, usually timing from "sail set to sail set again"). And painting ... the gunner was given men to black the guns, painting them with a special mixture which included lamp-black and Stockholm tar (one drop of which, Aitken swore, would ruin his scrubbed decks). Aitken was perhaps the only man in the ship who favoured blockade and lookout duty - he had the men and the time to get all the jobs done that could not be undertaken in rough seas, when wet paint would be spoiled by spray or men having to move across it.
Jackson, Rossi and Stafford were busy at just such a job: Jackson had drawn a booklet of gold leaf from the first lieutenant which Captain Ramage had paid for (the Navy Board did not issue gold leaf: their nearest was white paint). From the boatswain he had drawn a bottle of special size (for sticking down the gilding), a fine brush, and a chamois leather pad. Stafford and Rossi had brushes and paint.
They had to gild and paint the capstan, which was the size of a large fat cask standing on end. On top, in the middle, was a crown, whose gilding was wearing off, attacked by the sun and chipped during normal use of the capstan.
The most fiddling of jobs, the first started by Rossi and Stafford, were the wedge-shaped drawers which fitted into the slots taking the bars when the capstan had to be turned. When the bars were not slotted in, breast-high, the slots themselves held small drawers in which were stowed pieces of cloth to be used as bandages when in action and short pieces of line, each with a monkey's fist knot the size of a walnut. They were the tourniquets that would be used to bind up a severed limb and stop the bleeding.
Jackson had already rubbed down the crown with shagreen: he was lucky to get a piece of dried shark skin from the carpenter, who hoarded his meagre supply.
The American scrambled up on top of the capstan and carefully pulled the cork from the bottle of size. He poured some into a shallow dish and recorked the bottle. He then painted size on to the part of the crown he intended gilding, found the pair of tweezers he had borrowed from the surgeon and, using his body to act as a shield should there be a puff of wind, opened the small book of gold leaf. The leaves were an inch wide by four inches long, and each leaf so thin that the gentlest breeze would blow it away.
He held a leaf in the tweezers and then gently tore it out. He transferred it to the part of the crown with size, blowing the leaf so that it settled on the carved wood. He then worked it in to the carver's indentations, using a piece of wood with a finely-curved end, leaving the odd edges of the leaf to be cleaned off when the size was dry. He then sized another section and repeated the transfer of gold leaf.
Meanwhile Rossi and Stafford had removed the drawers, emptied out their contents and placed them on a small sheet of old and paint-stained canvas.
"Mr Aitken's goin' ter want ter know 'xactly how many leaves Jacko's used," Stafford commented.
"Is not hard to see," Rossi grunted. He was putting on weight round his waist and bending over to work on the drawers was uncomfortable. Finally he sat down on the canvas, holding the first drawer to be painted.
"Gold leaf would be rare old stuff to steal," Jackson said. "You have to be careful when you puff it on to the size: if you breathe in you're likely to suck it into your lungs."
"Then you'll be the only sailor in the King's service with gilded lungs," Stafford said. "Every breff costs a guinea!"
"You know about the guinea?" Jackson asked.
"What guinea?" Stafford asked cautiously.
"That's what can be rolled to make enough gold leaf like this -" he held up the book, "- to stretch round the dome of St Paul's Cathedral."
"Don't sound right ter me," Stafford declared stoutly in the special tone he adopted to express extreme doubt.
"Can't help that: s'fact," Jackson said, in turn adopting the tone of voice that showed he was not prepared to argue the point.
"It would not go round St Peter's dome," Rossi said triumphantly.
"Is that the place in Rome?"
"Is the greatest church in the world," the Italian maintained.