Ramage glanced at his watch and looked round for Southwick. The master was waiting with his quadrant in his hand. There was no need for a midshipman standing by with a watch or minute glass; the sun would 'hang' for many seconds as it reached the highest point in its meridian passage and Southwick adjusted his quadrant to measure the altitude. They were in roughly the same latitude as Ibiza and between Valencia and Alicante, he thought inconsequentially; thirty degrees north of the area in which he preferred to serve, the Caribbean.
The Tricolour streamed out in the wind: at least the breeze had stayed steady since dawn after easing down for the night. Easing down just enough, Ramage admitted, to let the convoy straggle to its heart's content. Now Southwick was, for once, becoming impatient waiting for local noon, for the moment when the sun reached its zenith and its bearing was due south.
Southwick walked over to the starboard side of the quarterdeck and held the telescope of the quadrant to his eye, making sure that no shrouds, rigging, lanyards or blocks obscured his view. He flipped down a shade, looked at the sun through it, and flipped down a second. Then he set the arm against a figure on the ivory scale.
Ramage winked as Southwick glanced across to see if this act of supreme confidence had been noticed. Southwick was in fact doing it backwards: he was in effect saying he knew already the precise latitude in which the Calypso and the convoy were sailing, and in that latitude at noon on this day in the year the altitude of the sun should be a certain number of degrees and minutes measured by his quadrant. By putting the altitude on the quadrant he should (if he was correct) put the telescope of the quadrant to his eye and, as the sun hovered at the zenith in the course of its meridian passage at noon, he should see it reflected in the mirror and apparently sitting on the horizon like a bright red plate balanced vertically on a shelf.
Ramage watched to see if the master's left hand reached up to make a slight (and probably surreptitious) adjustment - an indication that the Calypso was north or south of Southwick's reckoning. He counted three minutes and saw Southwick smile to himself as he lowered the quadrant and walked to the slate which was on top of the binnacle box.
'San Pietro and Sant' Antioco islands are dead ahead on this course, distant about ten miles, sir', Southwick reported. 'Thirty-nine degrees and two minutes of latitude.'
'Very well, Mr Southwick.' He looked round for Kenton who was the officer of the deck. 'I'll trouble you, Mr Kenton, to let fall the t'gallants, and once they're drawing we'll have a cast of the log. Keep an eye on the convoy and pass the word for Mr Aitken and Mr Rennick to come to my cabin.' He gestured to Southwick to follow and went down the companion way.
He had a large-scale chart open on his desk, and Southwick was placing the stone paperweights, by the time the sentry's call announced the arrival of Aitken and Rennick.
Aitken immediately looked at the chart as if hoping to see pencilled lines that would reveal the captain's plans. Instead he saw a fifty-mile stretch of coast running northwest and southeast down to form Capo Teulada and Capo Spartivento at the southwestern corner of the island of Sardinia.
Forming, Aitken realized, one of the great corners of the Mediterranean. Once a ship sailed into the Mediterranean past Europa Point and left Gibraltar astern, Capo Teulada and then Capo Spartivento, forming the southern tip of Sardinia, and Capo Passero at the south end of Sicily, had to be rounded before turning up into the Adriatic or the Aegean, or passing on south of Crete - he could not remember the name of that cape - for those places with magical names: Sidon, Tyre, Acre and the Biblical villages and towns, none of which seemed to be on the coast, as though the early Christians were wary of the sea, despite St Peter being a fisherman.
The four men stood round the desk looking at the chart, and Ramage put his finger down at a point about halfway along the coast.
'There's the Golfo di Palmas', he said to Aitken and Rennick, 'and Southwick assures me it lies just ahead. That island protecting it to the north is Sant' Antioco and the smaller one north of that is San Pietro. The Golfo di Palmas is reckoned one of the best anchorages in this part of the Mediterranean: ships can find shelter because even a south wind doesn't kick up too much of a sea.'
'And for our purposes not too many villages or towers overlooking the anchorage', Southwick said.
'None that need bother us', Ramage agreed. 'I haven't been in here for ten years or more, but last time there were a few fishermen living in huts, a tower or two and churches, and a Roman acropolis. They fish for tunny. Anyway, they need not concern us. Now, with our topgallants drawing we should be pulling ahead of the convoy, and because each master knows we are making for the Golfo di Palmas, that'll seem natural enough: they can see land ahead and those who could be bothered to take the sun's meridian passage will know that it is the right spot.'
'I wonder where they think the convoy is going to after that', Rennick said in an elaborately casual voice, obviously hoping to draw a hint from Ramage.
'Once they've rounded Capo Spartivento the whole of the eastern Mediterranean is open to them', Ramage said blandly. 'Venice, Ragusa, the Morea, Constantinople, Egypt...'
Rennick grinned and said: 'Which would you choose, sir?'
'For a visit in time of peace? Venice, Constantinople ... scores of places.'
'That wasn't quite what I meant, sir.'
'I know', Ramage said, 'but I'm making you add patience to your long list of virtues.'
He picked up Orsini's list of ships and the sheet of paper on which he had made an estimate of the number of their crews.
Now is the moment, he told himself. You can give one of two sets of orders to these men. One will result in a small but certain victory; the other gives a chance of a very much larger one. But only a chance; a chance in which he could take no precautions against things like a random sighting at sea, a night of gale ... And the question the admiral at Gibraltar - or the Admiralty, since he was sailing under Admiralty orders- would ask was why he did not take the smaller assured victory.
'Under Admiralty orders' - it meant, in a case like this, so much more than just receiving orders direct from Their Lordships. When a captain acting on orders from an admiral captured a prize, the admiral received an eighth of the prize money, which had to come out of the total shared by the captain, officers and ship's company.
However, if a captain and his ships were sailing 'under Admiralty orders', when they captured a prize they shared nothing with any admiral - with no one, in fact, except the prize agent. Not unnaturally the Admiralty were always on the watch for a captain abusing this situation. It was an obvious temptation for some captains. However, his father, one of the most intelligent admirals serving the Navy, although eventually his career was ruined when he became a political scapegoat, had once said to him: 'Always aim at a complete victory. Remember that a battle half won is a battle half lost. A man losing a leg doesn't say he's half lame.'
Rennick was examining the chart for forts and fields of fire, and seeing what landing beaches there were in the gulf, while Aitken was noting the soundings in the gulf itself, and between Sant' Antioco and San Pietro and the mainland, which formed a much smaller but obviously good anchorage.
Southwick, who had already spent a long time examining the chart and had inspected each copy made by Orsini for the French masters and delivered to them the first day out of Foix, waited patiently for the captain to begin.
Finally Rennick looked up at Ramage, and then Aitken said: 'It certainly is a fine anchorage, sir. Room enough for a fleet and you can get in or out in almost any wind: a little like Falmouth but without that narrow entrance. Well, sir...?'