The men began cheering wildly and an excited Lacey joined in, waving his hat in the air. Ramage, who had been expecting the men to start giggling, was so pleased with their reaction to words which had sounded ponderous and absurd to him, that he began to grin broadly. After a moment he managed to arrange his expression into a stern look, more befitting a conqueror, albeit of a barren rock and, as soon as the cheering stopped he looked around, as though surveying this newest gem in the King's crown, put his hat back on his head and said in a ringing voice: 'And I hereby name this battery the Marchesa Battery. May it play its part in defending the Diamond Rock!'
Again the men burst out in a roar of cheering and one of them began singing the first line of 'Hearts of Oak are our men!' and the rest of them took it up, bellowing lustily.
The moment they finished Ramage gestured to Lacey who took a pace forward and shouted 'Marchesa Battery - fire!'
Jackson tugged the trigger line and the gun gave a prodigious roar which echoed back from the Rock immediately behind it. Smoke spurted from the muzzle, spreading into an oily yellow cloud. The trucks of the carriage clattered as they ran back over the rocky surface and the rope breeching suddenly tautened and stretched as it absorbed the recoil and then thrust the carriage forward again a few inches. A mile to seaward there was a vertical spurt of water, like a whale spouting,
Ramage walked over to examine each end of the breeching to make sure it had not chafed on the rocks round which it was secured. One round remained, but he decided against using it: the next job was to get more powder and shot over from the Juno, but that could wait until tomorrow; then the men would only have to row a few yards. There was no point in leaving the gun manned; the risk of the French making a determined attempt during the night to recapture a barren rock they did not yet know they had lost was, to say the least of it, remote.
He let the men chatter happily for a few minutes, laughing and joking, teasing Jackson that he had missed the invisible ship, and then he said to Lacey: 'Secure the gun now, and we'll do those soundings.'
Fifteen minutes later the jolly boat was being rowed slowly up and down the south side of the Rock, close under the sheer cliff, with a man standing in the bow heaving a lead and reporting the depths he found. Ramage used the boat compass to take rough bearings and Lacey busily wrote down the depths and bearings as they were called out.
They started right close in to the cliffs, so close that the men occasionally had to fend off with the blades of their oars as a swell wave pushed the boat against the rock face. Ramage soon stopped glancing upwards because it made him dizzy: the cliff soared up vertically; from the boat it might have been five thousand feet high, rather than five hundred. Just as it soared up vertically into the sky, so it plunged vertically to the sea bed. The depths right up against the foot of the cliff were staggering, and he was glad he had told Lacey to bring the deep sea lead, as well as the hand lead. They were finding forty fathoms close into the cliff, and fifty fathoms only thirty yards out.
As the boat reached the end of the fifteenth run and turned to begin the next, and the leadsman, with water streaming down him, hurriedly coiling up the line, Ramage leaned across the thwart to look at Lacey's rough chart. The picture of the sea bed slowly taking shape on the paper from the depths and the bearing was far from reassuring. Lacey looked up anxiously, knowing how much depended on the result of the survey, and Ramage commented with as much nonchalance as he could muster: 'We won't risk running aground, anyway.'
Bad as it was, it could have been worse. There was a lot of coral down there, staghorn coral as far as could be judged from the pieces that came up with the lead. The trouble was that the scooped-out depression in the bottom of the lead, which was filled with tallow, was only intended to have sand or mud adhere to it; the tiny bits of coral that the lead knocked off as it hit the bottom were hardly enough for a proper identification. Any sort of coral was bad, though: it was jagged and sharp and quickly chafed anchor cables, and the Juno, Ramage reflected grimly, would be laying out four anchors . , . Perhaps only three, if the present calm weather held.
As he watched the birds wheeling round the cliff - he saw a white tropic bird with its long forked tail streaming out like two ribbons - he was thankful that.there were no back eddies of wind to drive the Juno against the cliff. None, he corrected himself, with the wind in this direction. No back eddies and very little swell. He looked up again at the top of the cliff, which was gaunt, grey and cold even in the sunlight, and so sheer that only a few bushes managed to grow in cracks and crevices, and for the hundredth time he wondered whether he could do it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The sky to the eastward was gradually turning pink beyond the mountains of Martinique early next morning as the Juno's capstan slowly revolved with Bevins, the fiddler, standing on top and scratching out a tune to encourage the men straining at the capstan bars.
Ramage stood at the quarterdeck rail, affecting a nonchalant stance to disguise the tension gripping him. The Juno was about to set out on her shortest voyage, less than half a mile, and he was as nervous as a kitten hearing its first dog bark. The ten-inch cable used to tow the Surcouf was now amidships, the first hundred fathoms of it flaked down and ready to run, only this time it would be running upwards.
The launch was towing astern with an anchor slung ready beneath it; another cable was flaked out on the quarterdeck ready to bend on to it. The two cutters were also astern, ready to tow the frigate to its final position, and the topmen were waiting ready for the order to go aloft. The jolly boat would be at the cove by now, and Aitken and his men should have started their long climb to the top of the Rock. The young Scot had been confident that he had found a route merely by examining the Rock through the telescope. Ramage, although doubtful, had not argued with him and he went off cheerfully before dawn, his men carrying rope ladders, axes, heavy mauls borrowed from the carpenter, sharpened stakes, speaking trumpet, and several coils of rope.
The Surcouf was lying head to wind, all her sails neatly furled on her yards, and only a dozen men on board. The First Lieutenant had worked well into the night to have the ship ready, returning to the Juno to report to Ramage at midnight, so exhausted that he was swaying as he spoke. Ramage had sent him off to snatch some sleep, telling him that it would take the Juno two or three hours to get into position so that he could sleep on, but Aitken had left orders that he was to be called at dawn.
Wagstaffe had tacked in towards the Rock with the Créole and was now stretching north again, and Ramage thought for a moment of La Mutine. She should have arrived in Barbados yesterday, and with luck she was now on her way back. By tonight or at the latest tomorrow morning he could expect Admiral Davis to arrive in the Invincible. There was barely time to get half the job done.
Slowly the frigate weighed as the sequence of reports and orders passed to and fro between the fo'c'sle and quarterdeck. The yards were already braced sharp up and the jibs were being hoisted but left to flap in the wind.
'Short stay!' came a shout from the fo'c'sle, warning Ramage that the anchor cable was making the same angle as the forestay. He put the speaking trumpet to his lips.