Ramage's Signal

Ramage grinned, and then noticed that they were rapidly drawing away from the dismasted Magpie.

'Perhaps your men would be kind enough to lower the saiclass="underline" it will take my men another five miles' sailing to find out how it is done!'

Chesneau barked out orders and the Frenchmen, putting down their muskets and pistols and grinning cheerfully, hurried to the halyard and vangs.

Ramage caught Jackson's eye and pointed to the muskets, and within a minute Baxter and Johnson were collecting up the small arms and taking them aft to the little cabin.

Lying stopped half a mile to leeward of the Magpie, the Passe Partout looked as innocent as a vessel waiting in a calm and giving her men an hour or two to try their luck with fishhooks.

Ramage and Martin watched the hulk of the Magpie. It was, Martin commented, hard to see the wreck for the Algerines: the ship looked more like a floating log covered with busy ants. Already they had cut away the sails to clear the after part of the ship, and now they were chopping at the shrouds holding the broken masts alongside the ship.

'They're in a panic', Ramage said, 'and either they do not have an effective captain or he was killed.'

'Certainly Jackson's swivels were quite effective - he found a few bags of musket balls and used them instead of roundshot.'

Ramage turned to Martin in surprise. 'That was smart of him. Where were they?'

'Actually the French master mentioned them to Orsini: he thought they'd be more useful than roundshot. Jackson managed to get twenty-five into each swivel.'

'One hundred and fifty musket balls in every broadside! Did he...'

'Yes, sir: as the Magpie went across our stern, they managed to fire each swivel at her quarterdeck.'

That was typically Jackson: he did not bother his captain with the question of whether or not to substitute musket balls for roundshot because he knew the answer and just went ahead and did it. And as a result it was unlikely that a man had been left alive abaft the Magpie's mainmast.

'There go the remains of her mainmast and the topmast', Martin commented.

'And the mainboom and gaff, Ramage said as he watched the spars float away.

'Now they're chopping like madmen to get the foremast clear.'

'Yes', Ramage said cheerfully, 'and very soon someone over there is going to realize they have nothing left with which to jury-rig her.'

Martin gave a boyish chuckle. The mainboom could have been hoisted on shears and used as a jury mainmast, and the gaff could have made an emergency foremast. 'They must have spare sails stowed below, but I can see the deck's swept clean - yes, look over there, sir', he said pointing to the east. 'All that floating wreckage must be her smashed boats and the spare booms stowed alongside them.'

'Well, they've a long row ahead of them', Ramage said sourly, and Martin stared at him.

"We don't ...?'

Ramage shook his head. 'Here, take the glass and give me an estimate of how many men you think there are still alive on board.'

Martin balanced himself, adjusted the focus of the glass and began counting in fives and had reached a hundred in less than half a minute. The next hundred took longer, and after two hundred and fifty he was counting in pairs.

Finally he gave the glass back to Ramage. 'Three hundred and seventy at least. Round the wheel the bodies are almost piled up.'

'And the actual complement of the Calypso?' Ramage asked, to ram the point home.

'Two hundred and twenty.'

'And we have forty French prisoners from the semaphore station.'

'I see what you mean, sir.'

'No, you are just doing sums, 220 of us against 370 Algerines and forty-eight French. You don't realize that every one of those Algerines regards you and me - in other words people who don't worship their god - as infidels. When they capture an infidel they kill him or make him a slave. They do not surrender to infidels; they'd sooner die, which is why you can never capture an Algerine. If they're outnumbered, they'll blow the ship up or fight to the last man.'

'So we leave them?'

'We leave them', Ramage said. 'If they'd caught us, by now they would be flaying us, or using us as live targets for their muskets, or chopping off limbs with those damned scimitars of theirs.'

He did not tell Martin that when the Calypso arrived, the Magpie would be battered until she sank. There were too many galleys rowed by hundreds of captured Dutch, Danes, French, British, Italians, Spaniards - anyone who did not come from Algeria or Tunisia and fell into their hands - for any Algerine to be shown mercy.

The Calypso was a mile away now, tacking yet again in the long zigzag against the wind. He could imagine Aitken and Southwick running from one side of the quarterdeck to the other with their telescopes, trying to see exactly what had happened, and no doubt the lookouts aloft were receiving their share of abuse for not supplying more detailed answers.

Rossi was proud of the way he had steered the Passe Partout and was just telling Jackson and Stafford for the third time how he and the captain had turned the tartane under the Magpie's flying jibboom when the Cockney said impatiently: 'While you was leaning comfortable against the tiller, Jacko and me and Baxter and Johnnie was usin' the swivels to knock these h'Arabs down like starlings on a bough. 'Ow many you reckon we got, Jacko?'

'Twenty with each gun', the American said soberly.

'Madonna! These Saraceni die of fright, eh?'

Jackson explained how, at the last moment, the French master had produced the bag of musket balls. 'Nice and rusty, too', Stafford said. 'Teach them h'Arabs to chain up our chaps in galleys.'

'And the Frenchies were cool enough, too', Jackson said. 'Each of 'em was firing aimed shots with muskets and pistols, just like Mr Ramage told 'em.'

'Well, I thought we was all done for', Stafford admitted. 'I could feel me anchors draggin' fer the next world. Surprisin' how quick yer can fire a swivel when you 'ave to.'

'Now what is we doing?' Rossi asked Jackson.

'Waiting for the Calypso to sink that schooner, I reckon.'

'Is best', Rossi said. 'We rescue them and they kill us. More than three hundred and seventy of them; I heard Mr Martin counting.'

Stafford shivered. 'Ooh, I can feel 'em nailing out my skin to dry in the sun. I'd make a lovely cushion cover in a harem.'

'Here comes the Calypso", Jackson said. 'This tack'll bring her practically alongside us.'

'Jackson!' Ramage called. 'Hoist number sixteen again.'

'Aye aye, sir, number sixteen, "Engage the enemy more closely".' As he extracted the flag from the bag he murmured: 'If those heathens have any sense they'll stop what they're doing and start asking Allah, or whoever it is, to lend 'em a hand.'

As soon as the signal was hoisted the Calypso acknowledged it and bore away slightly. She looked a fine sight, spray slicing up from the stem, her portlids open, the muzzles of her guns protruding like a row of stubby black fingers. Jackson noticed she was flying no colours - Mr Aitken must have decided he would not fight under French colours. Not that this was going to be a fight.

First the Calypso's fore and maincourses were furled with all the speed and smartness as though she was coming into harbour with the admiral watching; then her topgallants followed until she was sailing under topsails and headsails, the fighting rig for a frigate.

Paolo, standing amidships in the Passe Partout, felt cold, even though the sun was still scorching: his skin was covered in goose pimples and he wished he was on board the Calypso, commanding a division of her guns.

For centuries the Saraceni had raided the coasts of Italy; even now there was barely ten miles of coast not covered by a watch tower built - on the Tyrrhenian coast anyway - by Philip II of Spain as a warning system and defence against the Saraceni, who regularly landed from the sea by day or night and raided towns and villages. There was not a town in Tuscany that did not have a long history of attacks. La Bella Marsiglia - wasn't that the name of the woman in one of the legends? She was beautiful beyond description and lived on the coast not far from Volterra. She was kidnapped by Saraceni raiders and taken away to their headquarters but, in the only Saraceni story he knew of that had a happy ending, the bey or dey of the city saw her before she was sold off as a slave, fell in love and married her.