Suddenly two red eyes seemed to wink in the wall and a moment later two spurts of smoke changed into a billowing puff drifting away in the wind. 'Just west of the top of the point,' he shouted at Aitken and glanced round to look for the fall of shot. Two thin columns of water leapt up into the air a hundred yards short of the Juno and well ahead.
There was little chance of doing the battery much damage, and opening ineffective fire would show the French gunners that they were safe from a frigate's guns. It might be a better idea to let them continue to think so, but it was an equally good idea to let the Juno's men fire their first shots in anger.
'Mr Aitken - a single round to try the range!'
The Juno's 12-pounders could reach the battery, but the frigate was rolling just enough to make aiming difficult for the gun captains.
The aftermost 12-pounder - the one in his cabin - grunted and rumbled back in recoil. More marks on the painted canvas from those damned trucks. A moment before smoke swirled up from the port Ramage saw several spurts of dust just below the battery as the shot hit twenty yards below the wall and ricocheted up the slope. He managed to stop himself calling down to Aitken: the First Lieutenant knew what to do, and even now men with handspikes would be lifting the breech of the next gun and sliding out the wedge-shaped quoin a fraction to increase the gun's elevation.
'One more round to be sure,' Ramage shouted and the gun fired almost immediately. Through his telescope Ramage saw stones thrown outwards at the same level as the battery but apparently just to the right of it. Then he saw that it had in fact hit the wall.
'That's better,' he shouted, making sure all the men at the starboard side guns heard him. 'Now, every gun to fire as it bears - gun captains take their time and don't waste shot!'
Southwick, completely unconcerned with the thunder and smoke of the Juno's guns, was crouched over the compass, taking bearings of the tip of the Point and the battery. He straightened up and went to the chart on the binnacle box as the next gun fired. Within half a minute each of the Juno's starboard side guns had fired and was being reloaded. Smoke, acrid and biting the throat and nose, drifted back over the quarterdeck before being swept away to leeward.
Much of the wall had been demolished; through the glass Ramage caught sight of men in blue jackets scurrying about. Again a red eye winked and there was a spurt of smoke. He did not bother to look for the fall of shot - gunners who had just heard or felt thirteen 12-pounder round shot crashing about them would not be aiming with much skill. Only one shot. The other gun had not fired. Had a lucky shot dismounted it?
Even as he tried to catch sight of the actual guns, those on board the Juno began firing again; firing carefully, every gun captain sure of his aim before tugging the lanyard, as far as the Juno's captain was concerned. Another section of the stone wall collapsed, leaving only a pyramid standing in the middle; then more rocks began rolling from that, and he glimpsed a large black tube pointing up in the air, and beside it another such tube lying at an angle, like a log that had fallen from a cart.
'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.