Among the West Indian islands the effect of the trade winds blowing regularly from the east was that the west side of each island had this almost permanent smell, and it was one which became stronger as you went on shore and entered the little towns: the sellers (usually women) would have their small piles of charcoal under the shade of a big tree. Plump women in colourful but never garish dresses, chattering with each other in shrill voices, occasionally quarrelling but mostly laughing, eager to tease a bargain-hunting buyer who went to a rival.
Ramage shivered in the darkness. Smell, noise - and temperature. If you had been serving on the stormy Channel Station for a few years, a move to the Mediterranean seemed blissful because (apart from a few weeks in midwinter) it was so much warmer. Then you went to the tropics and for the first few weeks the heat seemed stifling, damp and draining off one's energy. Soon you learned tricks like always standing in the shade when the sun was at its zenith, and you discovered the cooling breeze of the trade winds, so that you became accustomed to it. No doubt soldiers on duty inland found it scorching for an hour either side of noon but, to a sailor in a ship anchored in a quiet bay, places like the West Indian islands seemed to have the perfect climate.
The Caribbean climate was perfect, Ramage thought, and there had been no pleasure leaving the tropics this time, particularly because the Calypso was not bound for home. As the frigate sailed north from Tortola, heading for Bermuda, which was one of the first stepping stones across the Atlantic going eastward towards Gibraltar, the temperature had dropped one degree for every degree of latitude made good northward. He had been thankful when they sighted the Azores and began the long final sweep that would take them down into the Gut, as the Strait of Gibraltar was always known to the Navy.
He pulled his boatcloak round him and with another shiver unconnected with temperature realized how a fox must feel as it paused to watch the pack of hounds sniffing the air, seeking its scent, because those two black shapes he had been watching could be a trap. They could be two hens waiting to be snapped up; they could also be two Trojan horses. All he could do was close with them and hope that sharp eyes and the nightglass would give him enough warning. After all, he told himself sharply, that was why he was here, one of the few King's ships now in a Mediterranean from which the Navy, stretched beyond its capacity, had almost completely withdrawn its strength which was needed more urgently from Brest to the Texel, from Jamaica to the Skaw. The Navy's task of blockading the French was like a cooper trying to prevent an old cask from leaking: no sooner was one leak stopped up with a small blockading force than another was spotted.
Of course, that was one of the reasons why Their Lordships m their wisdom had sent off orders from the Admiralty saying that the Calypso was to leave the West Indies "and make the best of her way" to Gibraltar (a time-honoured phrase). At Gibraltar, Ramage had found fresh instructions waiting for him - he was to provision for four months and enter the Mediterranean. The instructions went on in immaculate copperplate for several pages, but boiled down to the fact that Ramage was being sent into the Mediterranean with the Calypso for four months to create as much havoc as he could along the French and Italian coasts, disrupting shipping, transport, communications . . .
Ramage was at first hard put to know why he and the Calypso had been chosen: it was unlikely that Their Lordships were concerned that he spoke French and Italian fluently and sufficient Spanish. Perhaps they remembered that he knew the Italian coast very well - but Their Lordships rarely bothered themselves with such considerations, reckoning that any officer with a decent chart was as well off as someone who had sailed the coast a hundred times. Or - and he guessed this was the real reason - they wanted a former French frigate.
The Calypso was French built, with a distinctive French sheer and the French cut of sails. With French colours hoisted, a French sailor fifty yards away would not know that the British now owned her. She could pass through a French fleet without arousing suspicion; she could sail into a French-held port and anchor and no one would think anything of it, recognizing the cut of her sails. Signals would be no problem because Ramage had recently captured another French ship and secured a copy of the latest French signal book.
Ramage had captured the Calypso frigate, making her present ship's company (most of whom had sailed with him for two or three years and more) comparatively wealthy, thanks to the prize money. It was appropriate therefore that he should command her for this freebooting expedition into the Mediterranean, although Their Lordships would never let any sentimental considerations affect their decision. In fact, he guessed as he held his cloak closer round him, the answer was probably that they could take a frigate away from the commander-in-chief at Jamaica without too much fuss (Admirals always let out a howl of dismay when they lost a frigate) because the Calypso, being a recent capture, was an extra, a consolation prize. If the commander-in-chief grumbled, the Admiralty could quite reasonably reply that he still had the usual number of frigates.
Slowly, as the Calypso steered inshore, a dark headland which he could just make out to the south divided into four sections. The eastern one was Punta Ala itself, and the three smaller were the islets extending westward, as though a giant had rolled three great boulders off the end of the peninsula. The Calypso had sailed in just far enough to reveal the gaps between them.
A figure approached him in the darkness, padding along the deck like a tame bear. He recognized the bulky shape of Southwick, the Calypso's master.
"The islands have just opened up, sir," he said.
"Yes, I saw them."
"The moon should be up in twenty minutes or so. In fact I'm sure I can see a hint of it behind the mountains."
"Yes," Ramage said, lifting his nightglass again. "I can just about make out Monte Amiata over there. It's three or four thousand feet high and must be thirty miles inland of us."
Southwick gave a characteristic sniff. He had various sorts which described different attitudes and each of which, for anyone who knew him well, represented a whole sentence, sometimes a paragraph. Ramage recognized this one as a prelude to a nostalgic remark; even the preliminary to some sentimental reminiscence. Southwick, now well into his sixties, was tending to become more sentimental as the years passed, and a return to somewhere like the Tuscan coast was sure to stir up old memories.
"Deck there! Foremast here!" came a hail from aloft.
"Deck here!" Southwick shouted back, before he had time to make his remark, and Ramage was thankful he had kept a couple of lookouts aloft throughout the night, though it was customary to bring them down at nightfall and station them round the deck with more men, six pairs of eyes searching the darkness for enemy ships (there was little chance of sighting a friendly one) or breakers on a shoreline.
"I think I can make out two ships anchored in the lee of that headland, sir."
"Very well - someone'll be up with a bring-'em-near."
Ramage realized that he was mellowing; a couple of years ago he would have reprimanded a man for the "I think", telling him either he could or he could not.
The master looked round and an American seaman, Thomas Jackson, seemed to materialize from the darkness. Ramage held out the nightglass. "Aloft, m'lad; you know what to look for."
He then murmured to Aitken: "Send the men to quarters - but do it quietly."
The usual beat of drum would carry for miles on a quiet night like this and the regular "Heart of Oak" could hardly be mistaken for a French Revolutionary song.