Whether or not the French at Fort Royal would honour La Mutine's flag of truce when they saw what the Juno and Créole were doing was a different matter, but Baker had his orders. If necessary he could free the lieutenant on parole and send him on shore in the schooner's boat to explain matters.
One thing that particularly worried Ramage was the thick anchor cable draped along the Juno's starboard side. To a sharp-eyed watcher on the shore it would seem strange, but with luck no one would guess its purpose. That damned cable, a rope ten inches in circumference, was the main reason why the Junos were exhausted: Wagstaffe had worked them hard, fighting the clock. The cable was made fast round the frigate's mizen mast, then 300 feet of it was carefully flaked down across the quarterdeck, leading out through the starboard sternchase port, round the edge of the transom, and then forward along the ship's side to the bow, where the end was made fast with light line that a slash of a cutlass would cut. Thin line secured it every few feet along the ship's side, to prevent it hanging down in a great bight, but that line was merely seizing, and a good tug would break it.
He stood at the quarterdeck rail and looked around the maindeck of a ship which, as the great Tricolour told everyone in Fort Royal, was a French prize captured during the night in the Devil knew what desperate encounter with the two schooners now escorting her back in triumph, their prize crew on board handling her, as Ramage had carefully explained to Wagstaffe and the quartermaster, with somewhat less skill than she had been handled when she had tacked into the bay a few days earlier. It would be too much to expect a short-handed French crew - the schooners had carried only a total of eighty seamen - to be too expert.
He looked at the Juno's guns run out along the maindeck. Every 12-pounder was loaded with case shot so that when fired it would discharge forty-two iron balls, each weighing four ounces. A single broadside of thirteen guns would sweep the enemy with 546 shot, with another 120 weighing two ounces each from the three 6-pounders. Four-ounce and two-ounce shot was too light to inflict much damage on a ship, but sufficiently numerous and heavy to cut down men in swathes.
The guns were ready. The locks were fitted and the spark of the flints had been checked; the trigger lines were neatly coiled on top of the breech and tubs of water for the sponges stood between each pair of guns with match tubs nearby. The ship's boys squatted along the centreline, sitting on their cylindrical wooden cartridge boxes. The gunner was down in the magazine; the guns' crews were hidden against the bulwarks. At each gun port cutlasses were hung ready for all the men, while pikes were in the racks round the masts. Behind each pair of guns, well clear of the recoil, was a stand of muskets, all of them loaded. The decks were wetted and sanded but the planks were so hot that seamen had to keep wetting them afresh, using buckets and taking the water from tubs.
The skylight over Ramage's cabin had been removed and stowed below: it got in the way of the anchor cable as it led to the mizenmast. A pile of canvas stood by the stern chase port, ready for use as keekling, to prevent the cable chafing at the edges of the port when it was run out. Wagstaffe had wanted to measure the distance from the mast to the port and lash on the keekling earlier, but Ramage had watched the eastern sky lightening and had told him to leave it: there had still been much to do and very little time.
By now Aitken would have given detailed instructions to the twenty Junos he had on board La Créole; Baker and the Marine Lieutenant would have done the same in La Mutine. The poor Lieutenant of Marines was the only man disappointed at the role he and his men were to play. Not surprisingly, he was not pleased to be acting as jailer when there was a prospect of hand-to-hand fighting, but with the Juno's ship's company now extended over the schooners as well, Ramage could not spare trained seamen to guard the prisoners.
Close hauled, the Juno could just lay the anchored frigate, but the quartermaster gave the men at the wheel an order from time to time that let her yaw, so the luffs of the topsails fluttered for a few moments.
Southwick walked up to him, the great cleaver of a sword hanging from his waist. 'The Governor over there must be rubbing his hands, sir.'
'I hope he'll be gnashing his teeth in half an hour or so!'
'No doubt about that,' Southwick said confidently. 'Let's just hope this wind holds - it couldn't be better for our purpose. If it suddenly veers to the south-east . . .' The master left the sentence uncompleted because if it went round that far the Juno would stand a good chance of ending up on the rocks at the foot of Pointe des Nègres, at the northern entrance to the bay. Luckily such a wind on a clear day like this was unlikely.
Southwick then nodded approvingly towards La Créole as she tacked, the big fore-and-aft sails swinging over, the headsails flapping for a moment before being sheeted home again. 'He's enjoying handling her!'
'Aitken's first command,' Ramage commented. 'Ironic that it's under the Tricolour! A few extra tacks will give him more confidence.'
'He's going to need it,' Southwick said grimly. 'If he arrives five minutes late it might be all up with us!'
'And if we arrive five minutes early it might be all up with him.'
The Master chuckled. 'I think he took the point when you gave him his orders, sir.' He looked aft at the anchor cable, which covered most of the quarterdeck like an enormous thick carpet patterned like a regular maze. 'If that confounded cable kinks when it begins to run out it'll tear the transom off!'
'Oh, come now,' Ramage said mildly. 'We might need some repairs to the taffrail, and Aitken will grumble about chafed paintwork.' He turned and gestured to the quartermaster, who hurriedly signalled to the men to give a slight yaw.
Southwick lifted the quadrant he had been holding and looked towards the anchored frigate. He knew the height of the Surcouf's mainmast and had already set the quadrant at an angle the mast would subtend at the distance of one mile.
'Half a mile to go, sir. I mean, she's a mile and a half away.'
Ramage nodded as he looked at a white dome of a building at the western end of the city. It was dead ahead and made an easy reference point for the quartermaster. He turned and gave the order. For the time being the Juno would not be steering by the compass; it was going to be nip and tuck as the frigate stretched up towards that dome until the anchored Surcouf was to the seaward of the Juno; to seaward and, when the Juno tacked as the water shallowed, fine on the starboard bow.
La Créole tacked again and then La Mutine tacked and suddenly Southwick pointed at Fort St Louis. Ramage saw a single puff of smoke drifting westward and began counting the seconds. He reached five when there was another puff of smoke. Damnation, he had forgotten the Fort might fire a salute to the victors! The Juno's guns were loaded with case and there was no time to start drawing shot now to return a salute.
The thud of a gun close by startled him and he saw smoke drafting away from La Créole. 'Good for Aitken!' he exclaimed. 'He was quick!'
Five seconds later another of La Créole's guns fired as those on the Fort continued a salute.-'Hope he doesn't get carried away,' Southwick muttered. 'It's time all those popguns of his were loaded with shot!'
The Surcouf was gradually drawing round on the Juno's starboard bow as the British frigate reached the seaward end of the anchorage. Southwick lowered his quadrant and said: 'One mile exactly, sir.'