"It's well anchored down, sir," Southwick said, tugging locks of his flowing white hair.
"What now, Mr Ramage?" Sir Henry asked, and Ramage recognized the tone. That was the trouble with being lucky: everyone then started expecting miracles . ..
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Time and time again the Calypso pitched and snubbed sharply like an angry tethered bull as the cable groaned. Nevertheless, considering they had anchored the ship in the dark using only the lead to keep them from running up on to the shoal, and were determined to be within gunshot of the stranded Frenchmen at daylight, Ramage was quite content.
The Calypso was headed south-east, into the wind with the middle rock of the Formiche di Grosseto, for which they had been steering last night, now on the starboard bow, a jagged black tooth growing from a smother of spray. The French frigate was on the starboard beam, a cable distant.
"She's so much like us to look at... and all I can think is that's how we'd look if we'd run on to the bank!" Southwick said.
"I've been thinking that ever since I had a good look at dawn," Aitken said.
Ramage laughed drily. "I hope you've both learned a lesson: that's what happens if you have a poor navigator, or keep a poor lookout."
"That wasn't what put him up there," Southwick protested.
"No, and that's the third lesson: never assume the ship you're following knows where she is or is keeping a sharp lookout," Ramage said, "and if she's an enemy, assume she's going to play a trick."
"Don't keep on, sir," Aitken pleaded, "or you'll have me shedding tears of remorse over the way we led that poor Frenchman astray."
Ramage examined the "poor Frenchman" once again with his telescope. Yes, from the moment the Frenchman began his turn to starboard he was doomed. If he'd turned to larboard immediately, following the Calypso, he would still have hit the rock because he had no time to let go an anchor to stop and then turn him quickly. By turning to starboard he had just missed the rock, passing it close to larboard, only - as Ramage had intended - to drive up on the rocky shoal stretching north-west from the rock.
The frigate would bounce from rock to rock for a few yards with an impact that must have ripped her bottom as it sent her masts by the board, before heeling to starboard and coming to rest, still looking as though any moment she might topple off the edge of the shoal into deep water and sink.
Although the sea had eased down a little since last night, the waves still made a foaming white collar round the rock and swept on to hit the Frenchman's stern, frequently driving green seas unbroken over her quarterdeck. Already the sternlights of the captain's cabin had been stove in and seas swept through, to pour down into the gunroom. She must be holed badly: in fact, staring at her in the circle shown by the glass, it was clear that despite the largest of the swell waves swirling round her, she was not lifting to any of them: she was inert, resting (impaled rather) on the hidden rocks of the shoal.
The stricken ship was heeled so far that the men in the Calypso had the same view as a gull flying high over her starboard side.
As Ramage had seen fleetingly in the night before, her masts had gone at deck level, each falling forward. The foremast had crashed down on the fo'c'sle and launched the topmast on to the bowsprit, while the topgallant mast had gone like a giant javelin into the jibboom, carrying it away so that it was crumpled over the bow like a giant's broken fishing rod.
All the standing and running rigging - shrouds which should keep the masts braced athwartships, stays holding them fore and aft, the halyards for hoisting the yards, and the braces for trimming them - all this cordage looked like a carelessly thrown gladiator's net. The yards themselves were slewed across the deck; some, broken, hung over the side. Sails, what was left of them, fluttered like shredded bedsheets, dark patches showing where the sea sluiced over the canvas and occasionally, like a dog shaking itself, throwing up fine spray.
Yet Ramage was less interested in all that than what was stowed on deck amidships and what was hanging from davits aft.
"There are two boats on the booms amidships which don't seem to be damaged," he told Aitken. "Why the devil they weren't crushed I don't know. Some wreckage - from the mizenmast, probably - has stove in the boat in the larboard quarter davit, but the one on the starboard quarter - the one you can see - looks undamaged."
"So some of the Frenchmen can row on shore and raise the alarm," Aitken commented.
"When the sea has eased down. They'd never launch a boat in this. In fact they've only one useful boat for the time being - the one in the quarter davits - because without masts, and thus stay tackles, they can't hoist out the boom boats."
"No, but with a calmer sea they can manhandle them and just shove 'em over the side, and then bail," Southwick commented.
"Oh yes," Ramage agreed. "We've got to smash them all before we leave. And, because she's so heeled over she can't aim a single gun at us, we can take our time."
"At the moment we can't aim a gun at them either," Southwick grumbled. "Not until we get a spring on our cable."
"Exactly," Ramage said, "and now you gentlemen have had a morning promenade and digested your breakfast, let's get a spring on our cable and start knocking some holes in those boats before our friends launch them and row on shore."
As Southwick bustled forward and Aitken started giving orders, using the speaking trumpet, Ramage looked towards the east. The coastline was little more than a bluish-grey line low on the horizon, rising slightly to the north to form Punta Ala, and again to the south where Monte dell' Uccellina slid down to Talamone. The scirocco haze was too thick to see Monte Argentario or the island of Giglio - and, more important, it was unlikely that a watcher on the nearest shore (the flat coastline each side of the river Ombrone) would be able to see a couple of frigates at the Formiche di Grosseto.
He saw Sir Henry coming up the quarterdeck ladder, and as he could see the rest of the hostages examining the wreck from the maindeck, he was thankful that Sir Henry must have said something which kept them off the quarterdeck.
"Well, she's there for good, eh?" Sir Henry said cheerfully, gesturing at the wreck. "And I doubt if they'll be able to see a hulk like that from the mainland until this scirocco clears up. Her profile isn't much bigger than the dam' rock!"
"No, it's only the Calypso that sticks out like a sore thumb, and most likely we'd be mistaken for her, sir," Ramage said.
"Exactly. But her boats ...?"
Sir Henry was being tactful.
"Two on the booms haven't been damaged, nor the one you see in the starboard quarter davits. Still, I'll soon be making sure they won't swim again: we're just putting a spring on the cable now, sir."
"Good, good," Sir Henry said, but left unspoken the "Then what?" Putting the French frigate on the shoal had - well, only wrecked the French frigate: it had not solved the problem of the wives. Were the former hostages wondering if he would now decide he had carried out his orders, declaring they made no mention of wives? The orders did not, of course, and Sir Henry knew that. And Sir Henry probably knew that many frigate captains (and captains of seventy-fours, too, for that matter) would stick to the precise wording and make for Gibraltar . ..
Ramage waved towards the big black rock of the Formica Maggiore in sight to the north of them, and forming the northern end of the Formiche di Grosseto, and then turned to gesture at the swirl of broken water in the distance ahead which showed the southernmost of the three rocks. "Favourite fishing area for the local people," Ramage said. "Boats come down from Punta Ala and Rocchette, and out from Castiglione della Pescaia. And up from Talamone and Santo Stefano."