It took Ramage and Aitken twenty minutes to scramble down the steep slopes to reach the site for the third battery, two hundred feet lower down the Rock. It was a perfect place: a cave in which all the provisions had been stored and still large enough to house a dozen men. With a flat platform of rock in front of it, facing to the north, it was large enough for two or three guns, let alone the single 12-pounder which was all that Ramage could spare from the Juno. He saw that Lacey and his men had already rigged the jackstay.
From this point the rock face dropped down to the Marchesa battery so steeply that men were having to use rope ladders. Ramage commented on the steepness and asked Aitken who had managed to climb it in the first place and get a ladder into position. The young Scot admitted that several seamen had tried and found that after fifty feet or so they could get no higher. In the end he had climbed up himself, with a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. Once he reached the platform he had secured an end of the rope and hurled the coil down to the waiting men, who had bent on a rope ladder which he had hauled up.
Both men were standing on the platform and looking across the Fours Channel to Diamond Hill when they noticed that the ropes holding one of the two ladders were shaking. A minute or two later Lacey's perspiring face appeared over the edge of the rock.
'I'm afraid we're behind, sir,' he reported apologetically to Ramage, 'but I'm just bringing up a party to rig this end of the luff tackle; then we can start hoisting the gun immediately.'
'It might be better to hoist the carriage first,’ Ramage said, 'just in case ...'
Lacey's eyes fell. 'Certainly, sir, if you would prefer it.' Ramage glanced at Aitken and laughed. 'No, carry on, Lacey, you're in charge!'
The Fourth Lieutenant brightened up immediately. 'If you'll excuse me a moment, sir . . .' he said and ran to the edge of the rock, calling down to the men climbing the ladders to hurry.
He returned a moment later and asked Ramage almost shyly: 'If you could wait a minute or two, sir, I think the men would like you to be here when they secure the luff tackle: everything will then be ready for hoisting. And, sir . . .'
Ramage guessed what was coming next: they had thought of a name for this battery too, and wanted his permission. He was pleased with the names they had chosen so far: Gianna would be delighted, and it was a fine thing to honour the Juno frigate. What would it be this time?
'Go on, then,' he prompted Lacey.
'Well, sir, they want to call it the Ramage battery.'
Ramage felt embarrassed for the second time in half an hour. The men meant well, but ...
'I am flattered, Lacey, but - well, I think the Admiralty might regard it as ... er, well, a piece of pretentiousness on my part.'
'Ah, but we thought of that, sir,' Lacey exclaimed triumphantly. 'Officially it could be named Ramage after your father, because he fought his great battle in sight of Diamond Rock. But we, the Junos, sir, would know differently . . .'
Aitken, sensing Ramage's discomfiture, said quietly: 'The Captain's father is the Earl of Blazey, you know.'
'I know he's the Earl of Blazey now' Lacey said doggedly, 'but he was Lord Ramage when he fought the battle 'cos he hadn't succeeded to the earldom. Just as the Captain is Lord Ramage now, but he'll be the Earl of Blazey one day.'
Ramage realized that Lacey and the men must have had a long discussion about it, but Lacey was too young to remember that the battle had been a desperate affair, his father being sent out too late with only a few ships to fight an overwhelming French fleet. The result had been predictable and his father had been made the scapegoat for the stupidity of the government of the day, receiving no recognition for an action which had revealed him as a brilliant tactician. He suddenly decided that this little battery could indeed be named Ramage, and whatever the Junos thought he would be naming it after his father.
Lacey saw Ramage's face softening and he grinned. 'I can tell the men you agree, sir?'
Ramage nodded and then said emphatically: 'I agree to it being named after my father because of the battle.'
'Oh yes, sir,' Lacey said, 'they'll understand that.'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ramage arrived back on board the Juno to find Southwick waiting with ill-concealed impatience and asking for permission to leave the ship for two hours and to use the jolly boat. It was such an unusual request that Ramage frowned for a moment.
'You want to go over to the Surcouf?’
'No sir, I want to visit the Marchesa battery,' he said gruffly.
Ramage then noticed that the Master had a bulky canvas bag normally used for carrying papers under his arm.
'You can have the boat,' Ramage said grudgingly, 'but I can't really spare you for two hours. What on earth is there to do at the Marchesa battery? Lacey was just about to sway up the gun when I left.'
Southwick gave one of his sniffs. 'I've got my paints and sketching pad here, sir,' he said. Then in answer to the puzzled look on Ramage's face: 'Masters of all the King's ships are required to send sketches of unusual coastlines and harbours to the Navy Board, sir, as you well know, and I've always been very punctilious about that'
'I know, I know, and your sketches and paintings are excellent, but what is unusual about the Diamond Rock that the Navy Board don't already know?'
Southwick sighed, obviously unwilling to reveal his real motive. 'I wanted to make a water-colour of the side of the Rock showing the Marchesa battery, sir, and frame it, and I was going to ask you to give it to Her Ladyship with the compliments of the Junos.'
For the third time in an hour Ramage was embarrassed. 'She'll be delighted, Southwick, and so will I.'
With that he decided to go down to his cabin and put in an hour or two studying the chart of Martinique and then bring his Journal up to date. He might as well start a draft of a report to Admiral Davis, reporting that the Surcouf was ready and three batteries had been established.
He spread the chart on his desk and with a pair of compasses scribed a circle round the Diamond Rock so that one edge just touched the land at the foot of Diamond Hill. The guns certainly reached that distance, and it was startling how the western section of the circle would affect French ships making for Fort Royal outside the Diamond Rock after rounding Pointe des Salines. It did not add much to the actual distance they would sail - sixteen miles from the Pointe up to Cap Salomon staying inside the Diamond Rock, the most direct route, and only seventeen and a half keeping outside the radius of the Juno battery's guns. But it forced them another couple of miles offshore, into the strong current which might sweep them out westward, well to leeward of Fort Royal.
The last few days had shown him why the French ships, men-o'-war as well as merchantmen, liked to hug the coast once they rounded Pointe des Salines. For half the distance to the Diamond they did not risk running out of wind entirely because the land to the east was not so mountainous. If they lost some of the wind as they came up to the Diamond, intending to pass through the Fours Channel, at least they were out of the worst of the current.
If the current was north-going, they could risk going outside the Diamond, but he knew from Captain Eames's experience and Wagstaffe's brief reports from La Créole that it was predominantly west-going. He laughed to himself. If he forced too many French merchantmen so far to the west that they ended up across the Caribbean at Port de la Paix at the western end of Hispaniola, there would soon be complaints to the Admiralty from the Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica that the French forces there were being heavily reinforced with supplies. It was an ill-wind...
He rolled up the chart and put it aside. Bowen's sick list was under a paperweight, left there by the clerk, and he glanced through it. Only one man on it, and that the Marine wounded by a cutlass in the attack on the Diamond Hill battery. As young Paolo was not mentioned it showed that the boy was carrying out his duties despite his raw hands.