Ramage looked across at the approaching frigate but knew that the sharp eyes of Orsini, Aitken and the masthead lookouts would keep him informed, so contented himself with an inspection of the Calypso. She was ready for battle, or for lining the bulwarks and giving a friendly ship a cheer.
All the guns were run out; half a dozen men were gathered round each breech, their different shirts making splashes of colour. Most of them had narrow bands of cloth tied round their heads, across their foreheads, to prevent salty perspiration running into their eyes. Cutlasses were stowed along the inside of the bulwarks where they could be snatched up in an emergency; pikes and pistols were all placed near at hand. The muskets were still in the arms lockers, thanks to Ramage's long-held view that a musket was a clumsy and bulky weapon in an open boat or a frigate, and useless (except as a heavy object to hurl at the enemy) after firing one shot.
The 12-pounder guns were shiny black cylinders: the last job for the ship's company before the Calypso left Carlisle Bay was to give all the guns another coat of blacking. Curious how every ship's gunner kept secret his particular recipe, but they were all much the same, depending on soot, although he recalled one gunner who swore by rust which was pounded into a fine dust and bound together by lacquer. Anyway, most of the shot the Calypso would need if she went into action had just been scaled of rust by men tapping away with chipping hammers. It was hard to prevent them hammering too hard and pitting the roundshot with tiny dents. Almost more important, each shot had been passed several times through a shot gauge, a brass ring with an inside diameter precisely the correct size for a 12-pounder shot, just under four and a half inches. If there were any tiny hummocks of rust, or flakes of scale, the shot would stick in the gauge and the gunner would reject it, returning it to the men for more chipping.
Now those shot were ready for use, sitting in the racks round the hatch coamings in scooped-out recesses, so that they looked like large black oranges. More shot were close to the guns held in small pyramids by shot garlands, small rings of thick rope put flat on the deck and preventing the shot in the lower tier from rolling away as more tiers were added to form a pyramid. This time they would not be needed and would have to be stowed away again as soon as the Calypso stood down from general quarters, but Ramage noted that each garland was full; each pyramid was finished off with a single shot at the top, so the men were not saving themselves work.
From up here on the quarterdeck the flintlocks, carefully oiled small rectangular blocks of steel which could be fitted to the breech of each gun by wing nuts in a matter of seconds, glinted in the sunlight. The lock was the most important part of each gun, holding the flint in what looked like a cockerel's head and beak. At the breech end the firing lanyard was secured to a ring so that a steady pull by the gun captain (standing behind the gun and beyond the recoil) released the powerful spring and, in effect, made the flint peck against steel, showering sparks which ignited the powder in the pan and sent a flash down the vent into the breech of the gun, firing the charge. Until the flintlock was brought into use fifty years ago, Ramage reflected, guns were fired by slowmatch (in effect a burning cord) wound round a linstock, a method little better than jabbing with a red-hot poker.
Yet flintlocks did not always work - heavy rain or a shower of spray as a ship punched to windward could put them out of action until they were carefully wiped dry, and in action there was usually no time for that. As an insurance, a couple of feet of slowmatch for each gun was kept alight, fitted into notches round a tub of water so that the glowing end hung over the inside, ensuring that sparks should not ignite any stray grains of gunpowder.
Sparks were not the only risk: the trucks, the wide wooden wheels on which the gun carriages recoiled, caused a good deal of friction. The metal-shod handspikes, the heavy wooden levers like massive broom handles and used to shift over the breech end of the carriage to traverse the gun, could make a spark. So the deck, drying fast although the sun was getting low on the horizon, was sluiced down with buckets of water, with sand scattered on top so that the bare-footed gunners should not slip.
All these preparations, Ramage mused, because of the approach of another frigate which had almost certainly left Barbados a couple of days after the convoy, probably calling in on her way to England for routine despatches from Rear-Admiral Tewtin after visiting English Harbour, Antigua, braving the mosquitoes and general unpleasantness there to collect letters to the Admiralty and Navy Board, letters of absolutely no consequence. English Harbour had never been anything but an expense to the Royal Navy: even Rodney, after the Battle of the Saints (fought within seventy miles of English Harbour), had scorned the place and taken all his prizes (including the Ville de Paris, then the largest ship of war afloat) to Port Royal, Jamaica, seven or eight hundred miles away, giving Jamaica a sight still remembered, the largest fleet of ships of war ever assembled.
Ramage suddenly became aware that Aitken was talking to him and he quickly emerged from his reverie.
"That ship hasn't answered the challenge, sir."
Yet she had hoisted her numbers and a challenge. Probably some muddled lieutenant with the wrong edition of the private signals (they were changed monthly), having made the wrong challenge (therefore receiving what seemed the wrong reply), would now be scrabbling about trying to find the current signal book, being harassed by an alarmed captain.
In turn the captain would be angry because his lieutenant had made a fool of him over the challenge - and at the same time would know the seriousness of approaching a convoy and its escort without having made the correct reply to her challenge. Ramage was thankful not to be the lieutenant - though the fault was ultimately the captain's because the particular book of private signals with the daily challenge and reply was in his care and he should know them in case a strange sail came into sight.
He sighed: it was always the damned captain's responsibility, just as now he had to decide what to do about this approaching idiot . . .
He reached for his telescope, pulled out the tube and lined up the focusing ring. He balanced himself against the roll and was able to ignore the pitch. The view now brought closer by the telescope lenses showed a lower semicircle of dark-blue, almost purplish sea with an upper semicircle of duck-egg-blue sky, and right in the middle was the foreshortened frigate running down towards them. In a hurry, it seemed: she was still running under all plain sail, though surely a prudent captain would be clewing up the courses by now, if not actually furling, and certainly furling the royals, leaving the ship under topsails, ready to heave-to close to the Calypso.
Ramage studied her carefully. Sails - a few patches but everything in good condition. Paintwork - the black paint of the hull was still black (mottled with dried spray) but did not have that purple tinge which showed age, too much sun and too much sea. And the copper sheathing on the bottom, showing frequently as the ship pitched heavily in the following seas, was bright and seemingly new, as though she was not long out of drydock.