It was a distinct possibility: La Mutine might have been dismasted in a sudden squall, sprung a leak, or been captured by French privateers. There might even be a French frigate lurking out there, sent on ahead of the convoy ...
Both the guns were loaded and Aitken was waiting patiently. The man was so tired that he looked like a ghost, but he was still alert and active. He had been pleased at Ramage's praise but was apparently envious that Lacey was at work rigging a jackstay from the Marchesa battery.
Ramage was in no hurry: he wanted to imprint the scene in his memory. If the French arrived before the Invincible ...The convoy would round Pointe des Salines with all the ships bunched up. There would be no stragglers for once, because the captain of each merchant ship knew that Fort Royal was being blockaded. The frigates would be on the alert and the convoy would hug the coast . . . He stood for ten minutes fighting imaginary actions that would prevent the convoy reaching Fort Royal, and trying to calculate all the possibilities open to the French. At the end of it his calculations seemed of little value. What the Juno and the Surcouf could do depended on three things: the size of the convoy, the size of its escort, and whether or not Admiral Davis had arrived. Trying to work out tactics now was like trying to guess the sequences in a game of chess against Bowen, who always seemed to have dozens of unexpected bishops, knights, castles and queens at his beck and call. He turned to the First Lieutenant. 'Very well, Mr Aitken, are we ready?'
'Aye, aye, sir, the battery's ready,' the young Scot answered reproachfully, and Ramage realized that he must have been standing staring out across the sea for fifteen minutes or more.
The men, deeply tanned from the sun, their clothes torn, were shuffling into line and Aitken was standing in front of them. Ramage's heart sank as they obviously expected a speech and he had to admit they deserved one. They had slaved away at the battery and many of them had asked to be allowed to stay on and man it. There was not a bit of shade from the blazing sun, except whatever they could rig up for themselves, and no protection from rain.
Aitken brought them to attention and Ramage began speaking. He told them that they and their shipmates in the Juno had just done something that most people would have thought impossible and no one had ever previously attempted. He was proud, he said, to name their achievement the Juno battery. He wanted to end his little speech on an amusing note, and thanked them for leaving rope ladders for him to climb up the more difficult parts of the Diamond. 'I still think I should have come up in the tub last night,' he added. 'Nearly six hundred feet is too much for someone whose daily climbing is limited to the companionway!'
The men cheered him and Aitken gave the order for them to fall in at the guns, which were loaded and had already been laid. The First Lieutenant asked Ramage if he thought the shot would reach across the Fours Channel to the nearest part of the mainland, the steep cliffs where Diamond Hill met the sea.
Ramage smiled knowingly. 'We'll have to keep a sharp lookout for the fall of shot,' he said, and Aitken grinned confidently, little guessing that Ramage had anticipated the question the moment he decided to set up the battery and had failed to work out a definite answer.
The Captain had to be infallible. He had to be an expert in ballistics, at home with trajectories and the effect of gravity and range on a 12-pound shot. He had to be a mathematical wizard, able to work out the trajectory (and thus the range) of shot fired from a height of 570 feet when all he knew were some vague ranges for shot fired from sea level.
Neither he nor Southwick were even sure of the distance from the Diamond to the shore: Southwick's chart was the best available, yet far from accurate and drawn on a small scale. It gave the distance as about 2100 yards, but it could be a hundred yards more or less.
An error of two hundred yards in the chart could be critical. The range tables he had on board for a 12-pounder gun, such as they were, gave a maximum of 1800 yards using six degrees' elevation, with a four-pound charge of powder. The Juno's gunner had tables giving shorter ranges, but they were scribbled in an old notebook and the man seemed more concerned with the recipe for making up the blacking for painting the guns than firing them.
Using the ranges he had, what happened when you placed the gun on top of a rock 570 feet high? Did a six degree elevation still give you a range of 1800 yards? Or increase it? Both he and Southwick were sure it increased it, but had no idea how to calculate the amount. When Ramage had begun cursing his own lack of mathematical knowledge, Southwick laughed and pointed out that it hardly mattered; for the battery to be effective, its shot did not have to reach the mainland because no French ship would pass within a hundred yards of the cliff for fear of getting caught by wind eddies off the hill and would most probably stay in the middle of the Fours Channel. 'Never bet on a horse once the race has started, sir,' he added. 'Just look wise and watch where the shot lands!'
It was good advice and Ramage had followed it. The two guns of the Juno battery were loaded with four-pound charges and carefully elevated to six degrees and Aitken was waiting patiently for Ramage to give the signal for the final order that would provide the answer.
Ramage nodded and Aitken bellowed: ‘Number one gun, fire!'
Ramage barely registered the crash of the gun firing - apart from noting that up here it was free of any echoes - as he trained his telescope on the rocks at the foot of Diamond Hill. He waited anxiously, but there was no plume in the water showing the shot had fallen short. Nor was there any sign that it had ricocheted off the rocks.
He turned to find Aitken almost dancing with excitement. 'You were right, sir!' he said gleefully. 'It reached, just think of that! I don't know how you calculated that it would, sir, but there's the proof! No splash so it must have hit the land.'
Ramage was embarrassed. An evasive answer and a knowing look had been interpreted by Aitken as the confidence of superior knowledge. For a moment he wondered how many times in the past the various captains under whom he had served had got away with the same thing. Still, Aitken was only assuming that the shot had hit the land because it had not splashed in the sea. It might have disintegrated in mid-flight: that sort of thing was rare but not unknown and they would never have seen the tiny splashes made by the pieces. He had to be sure, and luckily there was an easy way of finding out without revealing his doubts.
'Mr Aitken, let us see how accurately we are shooting. I want the gun captain of number two gun to drop a shot a hundred yards short of the rocks and watch for a ricochet.' The second round landed just in front of the rocks, ricocheted twice and disappeared. 'Fifty yards short at the first grave, sir,' Aitken reported.
'Very well, I think we can get back to the Juno.' He looked round for the petty officer who was being left in charge of the batteries. 'Ah, Richardson. Rig a mast out of those spars you used as sheers and watch the Juno and the Surcouf for signals. You have a copy of the signals?' The man dug into the inside of his plaited sennet hat and showed Ramage the thin volume. 'Good, and you have a set of flags. Fine, so all you need to do is keep a sharp lookout. You'll see any ship rounding Pointe des Salines long before us. Keep in touch with the lower batteries. Any questions?'
The man shook his head and Ramage smiled. 'You have food and water for three months, and muskets to chase the goats. However, I hope someone will be up to see you before then.'