Ramage's Signal

'Ah, Mr Orsini, how kind of you to come along.'

'Aye aye, sir.' It was best to humour the captain when he was in one of these sarcastic moods.

'Cast your eye, Mr Orsini, upon the slate which Mr Southwick is holding, and tell me what you think it represents.'

The first lieutenant, lieutenant of Marines, master and captain: four pairs of eyes were watching him as he tried to make sense out of the small squares and lines marked on the slate. It looked like a maze. A puzzle. A diagram - yes, but of what?

'Come now, Mr Orsini, time flies, and your hesitation hardly flatters the person who drew the diagram.'

That was the first lieutenant, who had been at the maintopmasthead. Ah! That was the clue.

'II semaforo, commandante!'

Ramage said: 'Be more exact.'

'That French camp, sir: the huts are here' - he indicated the five rectangles - 'and this line is the wall.'

'The wall? II muro? Do you know what un semaforo is?'

Sheepishly Paolo shook his head. 'No, sir, I was guessing.'

'Well, it's like patterns on playing cards: each has a separate meaning. With that kind' - he nodded towards the tower, now well past on the starboard quarter - 'there are a series of white shutters, like windows. You open some and close others so you make patterns, like rearranging the black-and-white squares on a chess board, and someone at a distance using a telescope can "read" it and understand your message. Of course, he has to have the same signal book as you, giving him the key to the meanings.'

'Yes, sir.' It was so obvious; he should have guessed. But where was the next tower? And the last one? How far could they see from one tower to another? Where did a message come from, and go to? And why was the Calypso not attacking this tower? Surely tearing down one tower would have the same effect as cutting a signal halyard?

Paolo realized that in the last few moments all the ship's officers had arrived on the quarterdeck, and it gave him some satisfaction that Kenton, the second lieutenant, and Martin, the third, were even more puzzled than he had been.

'Mr Southwick will take over as officer of the deck; the rest of you come down to my cabin. Bring the slate.'

As soon as he was sitting at his desk, with his officers perched on the settee and Aitken occupying the only armchair, Ramage said: 'You've been bored since we captured the bomb ketches, and have to stand an extra watch while Wagstaffe takes our frigate prize to Gibraltar. I'm sorry I couldn't keep the bomb ketches as toys for you, but you saw how slow they were, so there was no choice but to scuttle them.'

'That seemed to change our luck, sir', Aitken said ruefully.

'Yes. Here we are with orders to attack anything we can find, no British admiral within a thousand miles, and all we see are a few small coasting vessels carrying grain, almonds, rice, casks of wine, olive oil, salt fish and meat. Nothing worth sending in as a prize.'

'So that was why you decided to leave the Italian coast and try the coasts of France and Spain, sir?' Aitken asked.

'Yes. What advantage have we, Martin?'

He liked springing questions on his younger officers; it made sure they stayed awake, and, more important, kept them thinking ahead.

'Well, sir, the Calypso being French built and still using French-cut sails, it means we can keep close in with the coast and the Frogs think she's one of theirs.'

'And the disadvantage?'

Martin looked puzzled but Orsini asked permission to speak, and said: 'It isn't worth sinking these little tartanes and xebecs because that would reveal we are a sheep in wolfs - no, I mean wolf in a sheepskin.'

'Exactly', Ramage said, 'but as Mr Aitken will probably agree, although we have no choice, it's an appalling waste of the kind of orders we dream about.'

'Aye, in a day or so I'll be suggesting we sail into Toulon and attack the French fleet.'

Ramage nodded. 'In the meantime we might attack this semaphore station.'

Aitken, still holding the slate, slowly uncrossed his legs and said warily, knowing by now to be watchful of his captain when he was in a bantering mood: 'I've been thinking about that, sir.'

'Go on', Ramage said, sensing the first lieutenant's embarrassment.

'Well, sir, doesn't the same thing apply? I mean, we're leaving the small coasting vessels alone in the hope of finding better prizes, but knocking down a semaphore tower - well, it . . .'

'It raises the alarm without giving us a decent reward', Ramage finished the sentence for him.

'Yes, sir.'

'But, my dear Aitken, we need neither knock down the tower nor raise the alarm. Why, in half an hour we'll be out of sight from the tower, even if anyone is watching us, which I doubt.'

'Then how are -'

'Give me your slate', Ramage said, reaching up for a chart, which he unrolled and held flat with his stone weights. 'Now, gather round, all of you.'

He put his finger on a section of the coast. 'You see this large bay, a perfect half moon, sheltered from all winds between southeast and southwest by way of north. It deserves to be better known. Now, here inside the eastern end and a mile or so inland is the village of Foix. Out on the end of the point is the semaphore tower and the little barracks.

'Now, look at the western side of the bay. No villages until you get to Aspet, twelve miles round the coast but only eight as the crow flies across the water from the semaphore tower at Foix. And what do you notice about Aspet, Mr Martin?'

'It's almost at the end of the headland at the other end of the bay, sir.'

'And, Mr Orsini?'

'That's where the next semaphore tower will be, sir.'

'I hope so', Ramage said. 'We'll soon see. And once we sight the tower at Aspet, we'll alter course for Minorca.'

Martin was just about to exclaim 'Minorca!' when he noticed that Aitken was using the dividers to measure the distances from Aspet back to Foix. Quite what that had to do with Minorca, Martin could not understand, but he had the wit to realize that one could also phrase the question another way - what had Minorca to do with Aspet and Foix? Then he realized that the distant island was a likely destination for a French frigate; no coastal lookout would be at all surprised to see the Calypso bearing away in that direction.

Deciding that he would not speak unless in answer to a question - that was the safest way of not making a fool of himself - Martin watched the captain, who was now looking at the drawing on the slate which Aitken had put down on one side of the desk.

It was curious how His Lordship (Martin still worried about referring to him as the captain, which he was, or His Lordship, which he was also, even though everyone said he did not use his title) looked at the slate and then the chart, then at Rennick and then back to the chart, without moving his head. His face was deeply suntanned and lean, his cheekbones high and his nose hooked, but the eyes were what attracted attention: they were brown and deep set, almost hooded, so that as he stood looking down at the chart Martin was put in mind of a hawk he had once watched closely as it sat on a bough: it did not move its head but the eyes missed nothing.

Yet, Martin realized with a shock, the captain was only six years older than himself: until the birthday a couple of weeks ago he had assumed Mr Ramage was - well, approaching forty, and was startled to discover he was not yet thirty. He did not look forty, or even thirty; it was simply that to have crammed so much action into so few years meant that Captain Ramage was still alive only because of a series of miracles. The hair had just grown back on that tiny bare patch on his head where he had been wounded in the West Indies - taking a Dutch island, Curaçao wasn't it? - although the left arm obviously still gave him trouble: he sometimes held it awkwardly, as though the elbow was stiff with rheumatism.