"Not your fault," Sir Henry said gruffly. "Just bad luck that this damned frigate -" he gestured astern at the dim shape in the wake, "- should have arrived when she did."
"So I'm intending to do this," Ramage said, quickly explaining his plan. At the end of it Sir Henry turned slightly so that he could look straight into Ramage's face.
"You're quite mad, of course," he said quietly, "it's the craziest thing I've ever heard, and there's a good chance we'll all drown in the next few minutes."
Just as well I did not ask for his permission, Ramage thought to himself and, coming from Sir Henry, such a judgement was not very heartening - to say the least.
"No," Sir Henry said, drawing out the words as though he had carefully searched his memory for them, "I've never heard of anything quite so crazy." He slapped his thigh, and for a moment Ramage thought the admiral was going to give him direct orders, saying he was taking command of the Calypso. "It's so crazy that -" he paused, as though trying to construct some exquisitely insulting phrase, "- it'll probably succeed. From what I've seen and heard of you, young Ramage, you have three possible fates waiting for you: French roundshot lopping off your head; or you'll come a cropper and a court martial will make sure you end up in front of a firing squad like Admiral Byng; or you'll command your own fleet at an early age. I wouldn't wager a single guinea on which it'll be."
"Thank you, sir," said a relieved Ramage. "So keep your guinea waiting safe in your pocket, and please excuse me for a few minutes while I attend to the business on hand!"
He went back to the quarterdeck rail by way of the binnacle, where the flickering candle told him exactly five minutes remained. Aitken stood a yard to his left, holding the speaking trumpet but otherwise seeming no different from his usual stance during a normal night watch. Ramage sensed rather than saw that Jackson was watching the compass and the weather luffs of the sails with the same easy but acute attention of a hovering osprey. The third man, whose task was to turn the glass when the log was heaved, waited for his two mates to return from whatever they were doing running round the ship. The wooden reel on which the logline was wound suddenly began trundling across the deck, dislodged by a sudden and particularly violent roll, and the seaman hurriedly grabbed it.
Ramage finally counted to three hundred. The slow count, each number representing a second, meant that five minutes had passed. Now was the time - but nothing was happening. He began counting again, one-and-two-and-three-and-four ... Six minutes and seven, eight and nine . . .
He walked over to the binnacle again. He stared at the watch, not wanting to believe what the hands confirmed. Yes, several seconds more than ten minutes had elapsed. He went back to the rail. It was absurd to be so precise; the log was not that accurate, nor the wind that constant. Any estimate of the speed of the northgoing current was no more than a guess, with the prize going to any number between one knot and three. Had that fellow Hicks been keeping to the course as precisely as he claimed? And had Ramage himself made mistakes in working out the course and taking it off the chart? It was easy enough when working with the dim light from a lanthorn to read a course off the compass rose on the chart and make a mistake of a point: Southwick's writing was small, and SW x W¼W could easily be misread. And was the chart accurately drawn? After all, it was only a copy, with no indication who made the original survey. So the Calypso, followed by the Frenchman, could easily be sailing the wrong course at the wrong speed over the wrong estimated distance.
"Clew up the courses," he told Aitken. That would slow down the Calypso appreciably, and with luck the Frenchman would not notice: she would close with the Calypso, and probably put it down to a fluke of the wind.
Aitken's bellowed orders quickly resulted in the frigate's lowest and largest sails losing their bulging shape; quickly the clewlines hauled the corners of the rectangles of canvas up towards the middle; the buntlines hoisted the centres upwards, so that it looked as though a giant hand was squeezing the sails in the middle.
Almost at once the Calypso pitched and rolled less violently. Now the fore and maintopsails were doing all the work, but from astern, Ramage hoped, it would be difficult to see that the courses were not still drawing.
He took his telescope from the drawer and steadied himself. The Frenchman was ploughing on, showers of spray leaping away from her stem like a gull's wings. Even in the faint light she looked a fine sight: there was enough spray to outline her hull, as though the ship was a bird preening herself on a nest of light. And yes, she was beginning to close the distance. At least, she seemed to be, but Ramage knew that was what he wanted her to be doing. "Aitken," he said, "get the nightglass and see what you make of our friend."
Aitken braced himself against the roll, after checking that the focusing tube of the telescope was out far enough to suit his eye. He seemed to examine the ship for an age before shutting the telescope with a snap and reporting casually to Ramage: "She's made up a lot o' distance; I have my doubts if she's half a cable astern of us now.
"And she's not reducing her canvas - at least, she hasn't started yet," he added. "And with this sea, I have my doubts if we were getting a proper reading of our speed."
"Faster or slower?" Ramage demanded.
"Oh, I think we might well have been going ... well, quite a bit - perhaps half a knot -"
"Come on\" Ramage exclaimed impatiently.
"Half a knot slower," Aitken said, and Ramage realized that the Scotsman had deliberately taken his time, as a hint to Ramage that the tension was rising too high.
But damnation, Aitken did not have the responsibility for possibly drowning everyone. Still, Aitken would drown along with the rest, so it did not make a ha'porth of difference whose responsibility it was: death was always completely fair, carrying off the guilty and the innocent, the rascals and the good men.
The Calypso butted into three successive waves, her stem slicing off sheets of spray which flung aft like heavy rain-squalls. Suddenly Aitken pointed aloft and put the mouthpiece of the speaking trumpet to his ear, aiming the bell-mouthed open end at the foremasthead.
Ramage waited for Aitken to report whatever had been hailed. Instead the first lieutenant reversed the speaking trumpet and shouted: "Foremasthead: quarterdeck here. Repeat your hail."
Again the wind whipped the lookout's words away to leeward. Damnation, the lookout must have seen something, but in which direction?
Suddenly a man ran up the lee-side quarterdeck ladder. "Larboard forward lookout, sir - you can't hear us. Ship or rock dead ahead, maybe three cables, and also breakers five points to larboard, mebbe four cables!"
"Very well, back to the fo'c'sle! Make sure Mr Southwick knows."
Which was which? Was the rock ahead the northern one, Formica Maggiore, thirty-two feet high and whitish, with a bank of rocks extending southwards? Or the middle, eight cables to the south-east of it, blackish and with a bank extending northwest? Certainly it was not the southernmost because there was nothing southwards of it to cause breakers.
A thudding up the starboard side ladder made Ramage turn. "Lookout, starboard bow, sir. Mr Southwick says the middle rock is dead ahead - it's not high enough to be the northern one; and the southern one's five points to larboard."
"Very well, my compliments to Mr Southwick and tell him to stand by."
Damn, damn, damn . . . they had found the ants, but which one to choose? He had hoped they would come up to the northern, the Formica Maggiore, but they were lucky to spot any of them.
So is it to be the middle one, now dead ahead, or the smaller one to larboard? Well, altering course five points to larboard will alert the frigate astern. More important, with the Calypso steering direct for the middle rock and the Frenchman precisely in her wake, the Calypso's bulk will almost certainly be obscuring the rock, and anyway the French will hardly expect. . .