"Oh, I beg your pardon," Ramage said politely, turning round and ushering Hill back into the boat and following him. To Jackson, just waiting for the last of the officers to board the Salvador del Mundo before moving out to secure the cutter from the great boom which stuck out from the ship's side and from which boats were streamed, like horses tied to a rail outside an inn while their owners were inside having a pint of ale, Ramage said: "Carry on, Jackson, get a painter made up on the boom."
Jackson had served with Ramage too long to hesitate: seeing his captain coming back into the cutter was enough to warn him that something unusual was happening, and he snapped an order which had the seamen pushing off the cutter.
The gap between the cutter and the ship had grown to six feet when a lieutenant appeared at the entryport shouting: "Hey you! You have to come on board!"
"Ask him to whom he's shouting," Ramage said to Hill.
Hill, now a different man and realizing that even if he was under arrest, Ramage was still a post-captain - and a distinguished one - knew that lieutenants bellowing like that were asking for trouble.
But the lieutenant was a friend of Hill's, and Hill knew the reason for the behaviour, and thinking quickly he stood up and shouted back angrily: "Don't yell at me like that. There's a trial due to start in less than two hours' time. Do you expect us to swing under the boatboom like bumboatmen?"
The Salvador's lieutenant stood, jaw dropped. "Come on, man!" Hill snapped. "You'll have a dozen captains alongside you within the hour - as long as you remember to hoist the court-martial flag."
"Very well then, bring your prisoner on board. But the cutter can return to its own ship."
"Most of the men on board, including those at the oars, are witnesses,'' Ramage murmured."If this sort of thing goes on, I shall have a long list of protests to make to the president of the court, with a copy sent to the commander-in-chief."
"And I wouldn't blame you, sir. Could you ask your coxswain to put us alongside again, sir? This fellow is a fool."
This time Hill was the first out of the boat, holding the scabbard of his own sword with his left hand, and with Ramage's sword tucked firmly under his left arm.
"The provost marshal upon the occasion and his prisoner, Captain Ramage," he said briskly. "Bring your men to attention!"
The Marine had already recognized Ramage and stamped to attention. The lieutenant was now examining a list with great concentration, but by now Hill had learned that Captain Ramage was usually several steps ahead of such games and beckoned Ramage to accompany him, making sure the witnesses followed.
"There's a cabin set aside for you, sir," Hill explained, "and another for the witnesses."
"I'd sooner walk round up on deck," Ramage said. "It's a glorious day and this ship interests me."
"Of course it does, sir!" Hill said. "This is the first ... ?"
"Yes," Ramage said and because Hill's question was unintentionally ambiguous left it at that.
When one saw the ship from a frigate, the name Salvador del Mundo, Saviour of the World, seemed - well, more than a little pretentious. But now, standing on the maindeck, one could see that the Spanish builders and the Spanish navy had built a ship of which they could be proud. She seemed more like a great cathedral of wood which should be standing four-square on the ground. Here in the Sound on a calm day it was hard to believe she could ever be fighting for her life in an Atlantic storm, barely able to carry a stitch of canvas and with great seas sweeping over the bow and thundering their way aft, and the planking working so that water spurted through the seams and dozens of seamen cranked the bilgepumps. Nor, standing here and knowing that the other ship must be just as impressive, did the name Santisima Trinidada, the Holy Trinity, seem so pretentious (or, to a Protestant ear, so blasphemous).
Curious how different countries have different styles in naming their ships. The British seemed to name ships almost at random; sometimes they used that of an old ship which had been scrapped, but if the ship was a prize they often kept the original foreign name, the rule apparently being only that seamen should be able to pronounce it.
Ramage could think of very few British ships in service which had been named by the Admiralty after a man or woman, apart from members of the Royal Family. Merchant ships and privateers were often named after their owners (or their wives). Certainly no names had any religious significance, except for prizes like the Salvador del Mundo. Who but the British, he thought, would have the 110-ton Ville de Paris as the flagship of the admiral commanding the Channel Squadron? She was not even a prize, but had been built recently in a British yard! At Chatham, in fact. Admittedly that Ville de Paris, which was almost as big as the Salvador, was named after a predecessor captured from the French, but Ramage could not imagine a French fleet sailing from Brest with the admiral's flag flying in a French-built ship called the London. Still, apart from a few big ships associated with places, the French seemed to have just as haphazard a way of naming ships as the British. The arrival of Bonaparte had made little difference, except that since the Revolution there was now a Ça Ira. The only danger of such a name was that the ship might sink in a storm, or be captured by the enemy. . . if the Ça Ira (a 112-gun ship, if he remembered rightly) was captured by the British, would Their Lordships keep the name? It would be a huge joke, although the King was said not to have a very strong sense of humour.
He suddenly realized that Hill had been deliberately walking towards the fo'c'sle, as though to lead him forward, and the familiar squawking of rope rendering through blocks, and then the flopping of cloth in the wind, made him glance up.
A hoist of three flags were now flying - the uppermost was a white flag with a blue diagonal cross on it - number two. The second, triangular and divided white and red, was the substitute, indicating that the upper flag was being repeated, so the signal so far was two two. The lower flag comprised three vertical stripes, blue, white, blue, and was number three. So the whole signal was number 223, and Ramage did not have to look it up in the signal book: The flag officers, captains and commanders, and all other persons summoned to attend a court martial, are to assemble on board the ship whose signal is shown after this has been answered.
An italic note below the signal in the book said: N.B. The ship in which the court martial is to be held, is immediately to hoist a union jack at the mizen peak.
Ramage looked aft and saw the Union Flag being hoisted. Tiresome, he thought, that an official volume like the Signal Book for the Ships of War should make such an elementary mistake as calling the Union Flag a "jack" when it most certainly was not being used as a jack, which was a flag flown on a staff at the bow.
"The Union at the mizen peak" - seamen's jargon for a court-martial, and as well known as being "stabbed with a Bridport dagger", which was another way of saying being hanged, and a tribute to the fine hemp rope made at the town of Bridport.