She was following all right, but Ramage realized that if his all-or-nothing gamble was going to succeed, she would have to be a good deal closer. A couple of ship's lengths, a cable at the most, although it was damnably difficult to judge a couple of hundred yards in this light.
How he hated the late twilight: distorting shapes and colours, it made him want to blink. Then, for a brief time after twilight one somehow could not accept that it was dark. Daylight is the natural time for human beings to hunt; only certain animals hunt in the dark, a time when the human is at a great disadvantage, lacking the animal's sharper hearing and sense of smell. And, Ramage speculated, an animal's sense of position. In the dark a human almost immediately loses his knowledge of where he is in relation to objects round him, but most animals remain sure-footed. Cats in a darkened room rarely (if ever) bump into chairs or knock over priceless china (although often blamed by careless maids).
There was no rush to shorten the gap, though. For the time being the Frenchman can follow astern at the present distance, Ramage decided. The longer he follows the more confident he will become. He knows that on this course we are heading for the Tuscan shore; but he also knows the frigate ahead would hit the beach first, giving him plenty of time to bear away into deep water.
The Calypso had been at general quarters a long time, but it was unavoidable. Hill, Kenton, Martin and Orsini were still standing by their divisions of guns - and they would be very puzzled. Steering for the Tuscan shore with a French frigate in pursuit? To them it must seem like running away up a blind alley.
Not only to them, Ramage thought: Aitken, Southwick and the old admiral standing bundled up in oilskins at the taffrail must be wondering. Yet that was one lesson Ramage had learned over the years - do not explain your entire plan to subordinates all at once: do it a section at a time, as it becomes necessary. Rarely can a plan be carried out from beginning to end in its entirety: there is usually a hitch somewhere in the middle, so the plan has to be amended to fit the new conditions. Subordinates, however, are often slow to change to a sudden new situation if their heads are full of the old plan. Somehow they seem to resist any modification, but if you tell them a section at a time - keeping them just ahead of events - they react quickly and decisively.
Ramage admitted that this system also allowed him to change plans radically at the last moment without all his officers knowing ... In a way it was cheating, but few captains could have more loyal and eager officers than the Calypso's, and because they were eager it was reasonable to conclude that the method worked.
Ramage's clothes felt damp, and now and again he shivered, but he did not want a boatcloak encumbering him. Curious how too many clothes seemed to make clear thinking more difficult, although that was not to say that pacing the quarterdeck naked would produce brilliant ideas.
"Deck there! Foremast here!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The shout was faint as the following wind hurled the man's words ahead into the darkness but Aitken snatched up the speaking trumpet and, aiming it aloft, bellowed: "Foremast, quarterdeck here!" He then quickly reversed the trumpet, placing the mouthpiece against his ear and aiming the open end at the lookout.
Ramage could just hear the words without using a speaking trumpet as an ear trumpet. "Breakers ahead!"
"Down with the helm!" Ramage shouted at the quartermaster. "Come round to larboard and steer west."
Looking over the bow he could not see any telltale line of waves breaking on the beach, but the lookout had the advantage of height. Suddenly the lookout on the starboard bow reported breakers, but by then Aitken was bellowing orders which were wearing the frigate, getting the yards braced round and the sheets trimmed. From reaching along on the starboard tack, the Calypso was now turning seaward; by the time she was sailing on the course Ramage had ordered, she would be on the opposite tack with the wind on the larboard quarter.
Reaching in a strong wind is easy on the gear but hard on the men. Now the frigate was heeling as men braced the yards and made up the sheets as soon as the sails were trimmed. Was she overpressed? Many a ship running before a strong wind found she needed to reef when she put the wind on or forward of the beam. The reason was quite simple: running before the wind, the ship was making say ten knots, so ten knots was subtracted from the wind speed. But by putting the wind on or forward of the beam, ten knots had to be added to the wind speed - and that was usually the amount that entailed another reef and sometimes meant handing the topsails altogether. But the change from having the wind one point abaft the beam on the starboard tack to snug on the larboard quarter made no difference.
As the Calypso wore round, Ramage's eyes had swept in a circle. Starting at the bow he looked for the breakers, then inspected the topsails to see if the wind was too much as the frigate swung on to the new course, turned to see if the French frigate was following, and finally came round full circle to try to penetrate the darkness and haze to spot the beach.
"The Frenchman's coming round, sir," Southwick muttered, "though I'm damned if I know whether he's just following our poop lantern or has seen the breakers himself."
"Following us," Ramage said shortly. "I doubt if they have a masthead lookout aloft at night in this weather."
"That's true," Southwick said with a sniff. Anything describing French incompetence always found Southwick in agreement.
Ramage took the small piece of paper from his pocket and as he unfolded it he walked over to the dim light coming from the lanthorn in the binnacle box. He turned to the quartermaster, but made sure Southwick heard: "Now you'll steer exactly south-west by west a quarter west," he said.
"South-west by west a quarter west," the quartermaster repeated and then, taking a deep breath, said: "If you don't mind me sayin' so, sir, t'aint the sort o' weather fer steering quarter points."
Ramage laughed drily as he watched the men turning the wheel a few spokes. "You were quite happy with a quarter point on the other tack. A quarter point now might make all the difference between scattering your sovereigns at Portsmouth Point or drowning within the hour."
"I wuz only meanin' the weather's got worser, sir; I wuzn't sayin' it couldn't be done," the man said apologetically.
"No, of course not," Ramage said, and sighted the long white line of breakers now on the Calypso's starboard quarter.
He turned to find Southwick standing beside him. "Sir, this course . . ."
"I know," he said. "You'd better get those men down to the cable tier in a quarter of an hour and the boys with the lanthorns. And three men with sharp axes and half a dozen hefty men at the bitts."
"But. . . but. . . we're clear of the breakers . . ."
"Where exactly are we?" Ramage asked tartly. "Do you want me to tack inshore again so you can get a sight of a tower?"
"Well, I don't know what you intend, sir," Southwick said helplessly, unwilling to commit himself and puzzled that Ramage should be anxious to know the ship's position so precisely.
"Well, I just spotted the Torre Collelungo a moment ago, the old square one," Ramage said. Luckily he had been looking towards the beach as he spoke to the quartermaster; even luckier that the tower, its shape unmistakable, had appeared in the darkness beyond the line of breakers like the ghost of Hamlet's father peering over a wall. Had the tower been round and not standing on a small hill, he would have had to tack inshore again to pick up another, but square, and in that position . . .
Ramage tugged the watch from his fob pocket and while he bent down to let the binnacle lamp's feeble light show the face, he said to Aitken: "A cast of the log, if you please Mr Aitken." He did not need Aitken's reproachful look to remind him that he should have warned the first lieutenant so that the men would be standing by ready.