So that was decided, and it had taken another forty paces, a total of 260.
What was he to do with the convoy once he had control of it? He could not expect them to sail to Gibraltar and deliver themselves up to the prize marshal, but he could not spare fifteen prize crews - and guards for all the prisoners.
Would they sail to the place he really wanted to have them anchored, where he could deal with them at his leisure? For three turns across the quarterdeck he repeated the place's name, as an infatuated lover might say the name of his mistress. It might work, and he had nothing to lose (except for fifteen merchant ships) if it did not. He went down to his cabin for one more look at the chart before the light went.
CHAPTER NINE
Paolo climbed back on board the Calypso in the darkness, and while the cutter was being hoisted in under Jackson's directions he decided that the last hour and a half had been the strangest in his life - so far, anyway. Serving with the man he hoped would one day become his uncle by marriage produced more surprises than did a Three Kings' party every January when he was a little boy in Volterra.
He patted his coat pocket to make sure his notes were dry - there was always a slop thrown up when a boat went alongside a ship, and the cutter had just done that fifteen times: sixteen counting her return.
'The captain is waiting for you in his cabin', Aitken said, his figure shadowy in the lantern light.
'Aye aye, sir.' First lieutenants do not waste time, Paolo grumbled to himself: three hours ago, he and Martin were shifting their gear out of the signalmen's hut and making sure they had left nothing behind that could reveal the British had been there. Since then he had boarded fifteen enemy ships...
Paolo could not get used to trousers and a white shirt, open at the throat, even if it did have lace at the cuffs. The Frenchman for whom it had been made - that miserable lieutenant - was too thin; Paolo was afraid that any exertion expanding his chest would rip it in half.
'Orsini! The captain!'
'Aye aye, sir.' Mr Aitken was such an impatient man. One could not report to the captain wearing sodden boots.
A bellow from the captain coming up the skylights from the cabin proved him wrong, and he scuttled and squelched down the companionway, ignoring the sentry's salute in his agitation, and burst into the cabin without knocking.
Ramage looked up from his desk, his face seeming daemonic in the shadows of the flickering lantern.
'Go outside again and knock.'
An embarrassed midshipman went outside, shut the door, said 'Evening' to the sentry - the nearest he could get to an apology - and knocked on the door just as the sentry, not to be outdone, announced loudly: 'Mr Orsini, sir!'
'Send him in.'
Once again Paolo ducked his head and entered the cabin. Seeing the captain in an open-necked seaman's shirt was a shock; the hairiness of his chest was also a surprise. Because the captain's stock was usually tied high under his chin, Paolo realized, one did not think of there being a body - not in the hairy sense, anyway - 'twixt stock and sole. Ah, there was a fine phrase; he had recently come across ''twixt' but had spent the last few days in the company of 'Blower' Martin and Jackson, both splendid men but unappreciative of such a word.
'Why is that dam' silly grin on your face?'
'I was - er, well sir ...' Paolo fumbled for a reason, unwilling to take a chance with "twixt sock and sole', and finally dragged his notes from his pocket. They were wetter than he had realized. His hands had been wet when he added paragraphs to them and even wetter when, a few minutes ago, he had checked to see if they were dry.
'What on earth have you got there - a wet rag?'
'The list of ships and their cargoes, sir', Paolo said miserably. 'I think I can still read it.'
Ramage took out his pen, ink and sheet of paper. 'Start reading, then.'
'I went to the largest ship first, sir, as you told me. She's the Sarazine of Toulon, 560 tons, pierced for eight guns but carrying only four, all 9-pounders from the look of it. Seven men and the master - he complains of several desertions before sailing.
'He says he has been the commodore of the convoy from Barcelona to here and is very angry about the lack of escort. He complains of the responsibility. I told him I was only anaspirant and knew nothing about it all and my orders were to deliver the orders. He calmed down after a while and accepted the new destination but says he has no charts for that coast.'
Ramage nodded. 'You reassured him?'
The question relieved Paolo who, faced with the same complaint by all fifteen shipmasters, had promised each of them that copies would be sent on board long before the coast came in sight. 'Yes, sir; I said we'd send one over.'
'And the other ships?'
'The same, sir.'
'Very good', Ramage said, adding dryly: 'You're going to be busy making all those copies.'
'Er - yes, sir. Well, she has a mixed cargo and is under charter to the Ministry of Marine. She's carrying fifty tons of powder for the garrison at Leghorn, stowed in half hogsheads, as well as flints for flintlocks. Five thousand for great guns, five thousand musket size, two thousand carbine and three thousand pistol.'
Ramage wondered if there was a good source of flints and enough skilled flint knappers in Spain, then realized they might have come overland, across France and the Pyrenees: it would still be an easier journey to Leghorn than across the Alps.
'The second largest snip is the Golondrina, Spanish obviously. Also under charter to the Ministry of Marine. I thought it best not to understand Spanish, sir, and they had an officer who spoke French. Six guns, pierced for ten, mixed cargo. Everything from lumber - for the shipyard, they said - to bolts of canvas. Oh yes, they must be short of casks in Leghorn: she has twenty tons of iron hoops, and thousands of staves for butts, puncheons, hogsheads and barrels, and head pieces of course. Olive oil, Madeira - they must like it in Leghorn, or else they tranship it - and several tons of currants and raisins.
'The master was complaining to his officers in Spanish, not realizing I could understand, that one frigate was not much of an escort, and with the Golondrina's bottom so foul, shewas going to have the frigate alongside of her most of the time firing guns and screaming at him to set more canvas, but as they were so short of sails the French - he used a very strong word, sir - would have to put up with it.'
Ramage looked up. 'How many men apart from officers?'
'Only five that I could see, sir, and the master, mate and someone who would be a master's mate in the Royal Navy. Very undermanned, except in light weather.'
'The next?'
'A very nice brig, the Bergère, captured from us by the French in mid-Atlantic, brought into Toulon, refitted and commissioned as a transport. Three hundred tons, and carrying great guns for ships, carriages for land artillery, harnesses for horses, and bales of hides which have been cut out and now need stitching to make them into harnesses. Very short of men, she was: the master and the mate are doing watch and watch about, and they have only eight men.'
Ramage had heard, as a dismal descant sung by all captured French officers, that they were always short of men, and this was proof enough: undermanned ships in the West Indies could be explained by the loss through sickness and the distance from France. Yet, here, along the Mediterranean coast, they were sending ships to sea with so few men that any master carrying topsails at night - let alone topgallants - in unsettled weather would be asking for trouble: four men trying to furl or reef a topsail in a sudden Gulf of Lions squall might just as well stay in their hammocks and let the sail blow out; they would be unlikely to beat the wind.