'Secure the guns!' he called down to Aitken, 'Good shooting - you've dismounted both of them.'
Immediately the gun crews began cheering and the lieutenants bellowed for silence. Ramage's eyes narrowed. The men were children to be cheering at what was little more than an exercise. He turned to the quartermaster, ordered him to bear away, and gestured to Southwick to give the order for trimming the yards.
Then he went to the quarterdeck rail and looked down at the men at the guns. Some were stripped to the waist, all had narrow bands of cloth tied round their foreheads to stop perspiration running into their eyes. They were grinning and gesturing to each other.
'Listen you men,' Ramage roared. 'With twenty-six rounds of shot, two full broadsides, you've managed to knock down a dry stone wall and dismount two small guns behind it, and you cheer! The battery is low down and easy to see, thanks to those Frenchmen forgetting to cut fresh shrubs to hide the front of the wall. But you'll all learn about firing at batteries when you have to tackle one on top of a cliff and firing down at you. One where every gun is aimed coolly because they know there's precious little chance of your shot reaching them. Now, get those guns sponged out, and let's have no more of this childishness!'
He marched back aft to join Southwick, his anger already evaporating. He was glad in a way that the men were pleased with their shooting, but he wanted them to be under no illusion about what the plunging fire of a well-placed and well-manned battery on the top of a cliff could do to a ship of war. The two guns they had just dismounted were probably firing at a ship for the first time.
Southwick was carefully pencilling in the battery's position on the chart and as Ramage bent over to see that a road below the battery went round the back of the hill, to the village of Bourg du Marin, the Master whispered: 'Nevertheless, it was good shooting, sir!’
'I'm not denying that,' Ramage muttered, 'I just don't want them to think that the fire from Fort St Louis will be like that.'
'Ah,' Southwick said and then, with a sideways glance, added: 'It mightn't be so bad in the dark.'
'Quite,' Ramage said coldly. The Master might feel he ought not to have been so harsh with the men, but too much praise was as bad as too little; over-confidence could kill them just as easily as a lack of it. Striking the right balance, that was the Captain's job, and he was finding it hard. A naval officer in wartime had to order men into battle, but it did not follow that he had to shrug his shoulders when they were killed. It was deuced hard work trying to train them so that they had the best chance of surviving, and that was what he had been trying to tell Bowen earlier. A childhood memory came back to him - his father about to give him a beating for some escapade which had ended up with his horse bolting, and saying with genuine sadness: ‘It's for your own good, boy.'
Southwick was saying something and gesturing at the chart, indicating another headland five miles along the coast to the westward and a mile short of the long stretch of Diamond beach. Realizing that Ramage had been preoccupied, he repeated: 'I think that's where we'll find the next one, sir: Grosse Pointe. There'll be nothing along the beach here, the land's too low. Then another one somewhere here, on the headland in front of Diamond Hill. I see they call it "Morne du Diamant".' He peered closely at the chart. 'Sixteen hundred feet high. This ridge here must be about five hundred feet. That's where I'd put one if it was up to me.'
'The gunners wouldn't thank you,' Ramage said, pointing to the nearest road, which ran along the back of the Diamond beach and stopped at the bottom of Morne du Diamant, a mile or more short of the peak. 'Imagine carrying powder and shot all that way.'
‘They'd use donkeys and slaves,' Southwick said. 'I can't see French artillerymen exerting themselves.'
'Those fellows back there stood their ground well enough,' Ramage reminded him.
'They didn't know what was coming,' Southwick said contemptuously. 'Otherwise they'd have bolted when that second shot caught the wall and ricocheted past their ears.'
By noon the Juno had passed Cap Salomon and sheets and braces were being hauled as the helm was put up for the frigate to begin beating into Fort Royal Bay. Southwick had been right, there had been a battery at Grosse Pointe and two guns had fired, but Ramage had not fired back. Dismounted guns could be remounted on new carriages; the Grosse Pointe battery and the one that had fired a single gun from a third of the way up Diamond Hill would have to be destroyed completely. As a result they had been left alone, and Southwick had marked their precise positions on the chart and made neat sketches in the log. The fourth battery had predictably been sited at Cap Salomon: four guns which had fired a dozen shots each as the Juno sailed slowly by a mile off, well within range. Not one of the shots landed within two or three cables of the frigate, and the battery was so high there was little danger from ricochets skimming low over the sea.
The frigate had no sooner rounded Cap Salomon than the city of Fort Royal came in sight as the great bay opened up. Built on the northern side, it was only just inside it. The higher buildings showed up white and red in the telescope but with the mouth of the bay nearly four miles wide it was still impossible to make out much detail.
The ship's company had had dinner and were in good spirits; Aitken reported wryly that he had heard much among the men about how they could have knocked out the other batteries, and that the Captain was probably leaving them for the time being, intending to tackle one a week to keep the guns' crews in practice.
Ramage smiled and glanced at the dogvanes from time to time. The wind was light and from the east, but they were still in the lee of the mountains behind Cap Salomon. Once they came clear of the headland - and the north-going current was giving them a good lift - there should be a good wind all the way up to Fort Royal because the land on the eastern side of the bay was low.
Ramage felt the excitement growing on board the frigate: the men were still at quarters and Jackson, Rossi, Stafford and several other former Tritons were conspicuous for their nonchalance. They had been in action too many times to be impressed by the distant sight of a French port. Young Orsini and Benson were wearing their dirks with all the flourish of fencing masters, eager as ferrets to catch his eye in case there was a message to carry or an errand to perform.
'Mr Aitken, I think we can be sure the Governor of Fort Royal has a list of the Navy so we might as well introduce ourselves. Have our pendant numbers hoisted.'
The First Lieutenant snapped the order to the two midshipmen, who ran to the flag locker, and the men watched the three flags being hoisted. Hearing a curious murmuring, Ramage walked to the quarterdeck rail to look down on the maindeck. The men were grinning and clapping each other on the back, obviously delighted that the flags streaming in the wind were advertising their presence in an enemy port.
Ramage walked aft again. It was a small thing, but the men obviously wanted Fort Royal to know that the frigate was the Juno. Perhaps that was what Bowen had meant, but pride in their ship was still a poor excuse for firing pistols all over the place.
He suddenly realized that the men and, damnation take it, the lieutenants too, were behaving as though they expected the Juno to stay on this tack and storm Fort Louis! He gestured to the First Lieutenant and Master to join him by the capstan, where they could talk out of earshot of the quartermaster and the men at the wheel.
'My intention,' he said heavily, 'is to beat into the bay until we get a sight of the Salée River anchorage and can see what vessels are there. After that we will bear away round the south end of the shoal to the east of the city, then bear up again towards the Carénage and Fort St Louis for a sight of the frigates. After that we'll bear away so we can run past the front of the city and out to Pointe des Nègres. By that time I hope to have a complete list of every ship and vessel in the bay that might interest us, with their positions.'