Ramage said to the Spanish master: 'I am going to be generous. If I was an Algerine, I would cut all your throats, eh?'
The master nodded miserably and rubbed his unshaven chin in a reflex gesture.
'I am going to land you on the beach. You will all immediately go inland out of sight. Cagliari is to the southeast, and I suggest you follow the coast road. Do not try to raise the alarm because there are fourteen other ships in the convoy, and you could cause a great deal of bloodshed.'
Ramage saw that the man understood. He would be marooned on an alien island, but there were many towns and ports in Sardinia, and he would eventually get back to Spain. The gig's keel scraped on the sand, and the men of the Golondrina scrambled on shore while Jackson's men kept them covered from the cutter.
Southwick wrote carefully in his log, using the slate to help his memory: 'Two pm wind W by S. Anchored with best bower in five fms, Vacca I. bearing SW by W, white house on S. Antioco NW by ½W, ruin on P. Botte E by S. 2.30 pm all boats hoisted out, manned and three pm, left under general command of the captain. Pumped ship at ten ins. Fresh water remaining twenty-one tons. 3.15 pm first ships of French convoy entering gulf and anchoring as convenient.'
Southwick sniffed as he wiped his pen dry. 'As convenient' be damned; they were just sailing in, clewing up or brailing sails, turning head to wind and tipping anchors over the side as though disposing of rubbish. The Sarazine would foul the Calypso the moment the wind had any east in it; the Golondrina needed only a north wind to bring her crashing into the Calypso, and two other ships only a little smaller than the Sarazine obviously had not let out enough scope on their cables and would drag on to the frigate if the wind picked up. And the damnable thing was that he could do nothing about it: no one left on board the Calypso spoke a word of French: Mr Ramage was away with the boats and Mr Orsini was only just now coming into sight with the Passe Partout.
He had not heard a shot fired so far: not a pistol, not a musket, not a great gun: it was waiting for the sound of a shot that was making him so bad-tempered. If anything went wrong, what could he do, with no boats and fifty men left on board, all of them old wrecks like himself, short of wind, a quarter of them wearing trusses, half of them bleary of eye, and most shaky of gait? All of them had spirit enough, but a warlike yell and threat of a broadside would not be enough to get even one of them up to the mainyard in under five minutes.
He, Edward Southwick, had to admit that at the moment he was a Falstaff at the head of a rag-tag and bobtail party of seamen who, when mixed with the rest of the ship's company, did their jobs well enough: there was no need for the cook to have two legs and no reason why his mate should not be cross-eyed - except in a situation like this.
'Signal from the Golondrina, sir', a seaman called down.
Cursing, Southwick grabbed his hat and sword and hurried up the ladder.
'French flags, sir, I've worked it out as being this one.' He pointed to it in the signal book. 'I don't understand the lingo, sir, but the book mentions "charpentier". Perhaps it means send over the carpenter and his mates?'
Southwick nodded, and said: 'Just acknowledge it.' He did not need to know French to understand the message: it was a code arranged by Mr Ramage so that he and the other boarding parties could use the French system to send signals to the Calypso which, read by any other of the French ships, would seem innocent enough.
So Mr Ramage had secured the Golondrina and would be leaving young Kenton in command with his party while he took the Spanish crew on shore in the gig. He opened his telescope and a few moments later saw the gig appear round the stern of the Spanish ship, followed by the green cutter. He had to admit that Mr Ramage was right; with so many of the Calypso's boats rowing round apparently at random it all seemed quite natural and no one would notice. The mixture of French uniforms and old clothes, for example, was typically the way the French would do it, so that the gig making for the beach with ten or more Spaniards from the Golondrina looked no different from when she first went alongside with a boarding party from the Calypso. The substitution of Spaniards for boarding party was not noticeable.
The Golondrina would have been no problem because, of course, Mr Ramage spoke Spanish, but what about Aitken with the Sarazine?Still, the muzzle of a pistol pointing at you had a language all of its own.
He saw a movement of colour just as the seaman spoke: the same signal was being hoisted from the Sarazine and the launch was leaving her and rowing steadily along the coast: obviously Aitken had ordered his prisoners to be landed a long way from the Golondrina people.
Martin steered the red cutter another point to starboard. The brig Bergère had now anchored and he could distinguish the master, a fat man wearing a beret and looking as though he would be more at home sitting under an old plane tree in the place of a small town in the south of France, and the mate, a lanky man in a red shirt. He had counted nine seamen and petty officers, only one more than Orsini had noted, so the boy had done a good job.
He saw that both the Golondrina and Sarazine were flying the signal, so Mr Aitken and Kenton had taken their prizes.
It was easy enough to see that the Bergère brig had been built in England and, remembering what he had learned all the time he had been growing up as the son of the master shipwright at Chatham Dockyard, he guessed from her sheer and the shape of her stern that she had been built on the south coast not too far from Portsmouth. At Bursledon perhaps, or even East Cowes. Getting on for three hundred tons and down on her marks - he could see that she was pierced for six guns and carried them, 9-pounders from the look of it. According to Orsini her holds were full of carriages for land guns, harnesses, hides and a ground tier of guns to mount on the carriages.
There were fewer Frenchmen on deck now: with the anchor down and sails furled (bundled up, to his way of thinking) they probably thought their day's work was over.
'Stand by, men, I'm going alongside now.'
He pushed the tiller over with his shoulder as he crouched for a moment to check that his pistols were held tightly by the belt hooks.
One of his seamen was standing up in the bow, holding a boathook horizontally across his chest. No one in the Bergère showed the slightest interest; in fact the red cutter was now so close that a man in the brig would have to stand on the bulwark and peer down to see her.
He could scramble up the side - none of the other ships would see - or go on board in a dignified fashion, followed by his men and pretending until the last moment to be French. Mr Ramage had said they should get as far as possible with bluff, and from the indifference of the men in the Bergère, Martin was sure he and half a dozen men could get to the wheel without being challenged.
Then the cutter was alongside, the men using the oars without orders and then boating them, while the seamen forward hooked on to an eyebolt with the boathook. A second seaman climbed up the ship's side in a leisurely fashion with the painter while a third went up with the sternfast. Martin, mouth dry, his heart seeming to skid over cobblestones rather than beat regularly, jammed his hat (according to the label inside it belonged to someone called Pierre Duhamel, now prisoner in the Calypso) firmly on his head and climbed up the side battens.
For the last few seconds, as his head appeared over the level of the deck at the entryport, he looked round the Bergère and saw the fat man in the beret standing right aft and unaware that there was a boat alongside. Catching sight of Martin he gave a cheerful wave and bellowed for the mate, whose red shirt Martin could see on the foredeck.