He fumbled for the top right-hand drawer - he'd often seen the Captain put his secret papers in there. It was locked - blast, of course it was locked, and he had neither sword nor pistol to force it open. At that moment he saw a light appear behind him, filling the cabin with strange shadows, and as he swung round a nasal voice said:
'Can I help you, sir?'
It was the Captain's cox'n, a cadaverous-faced American named Thomas Jackson, and he was holding a battle lantern in one hand and a pistol in the other.
'Yes, open this drawer.'
Jackson thrust the pistol in his belt and walked over to one of the cannon on the larboard side of the cabin. The carriage had been smashed by a shot and the barrel lay across the wreckage. In the light of the lantern Ramage was startled to see the bodies of three men - they must have been killed by the shot that dismounted the gun.
The American came back carrying a bloodstained handspike, the long wooden bar made of ash and tipped with a metal shoe, used to lever round the carriages of the guns when training them.
'If you'd hold the lantern and stand back, sir ...' he said politely.
He swung the handspike so that the shoe smashed the corner of the desk. Ramage wrenched the drawer open with one hand and gave the lantern to Jackson.
"Hold it up a bit.'
He pulled the drawer right out. On top of several books and papers was a linen envelope with a broken seal. Ramage opened it and took out a two-page letter, which was headed 'Secret' and signed 'J. Jervis'. They were the orders, and he put them back in the envelope and tucked it into his pocket. He glanced at the books, the first of which, labelled 'Letter Book', contained copies of all recent official letters received in the Sibella and all those written. The second, labelled 'Order Book', contained copies of all orders the Captain had given and received, except, probably, the last one from Admiral Jervis. Next came the Captain's Log - usually little more than a copy of the one kept by the Master.
Then there was a sheaf of forms and signed documents — the Admiralty believed the King's ships could not float without having a vast number of papers on board to give them buoyancy. 'Cooper's Affidavit to Leakage of Beer' - hmm, that concerned the five casks found to be damaged at Gibraltar; 'Bounty List', 'Conduct List', 'Account of Paper Expended'... Ramage tore them up. Here was the copy of the Fighting Instructions - it was sufficient to destroy that - and the slim volume containing the Articles of War, the set of laws by which the Navy was governed. They were far from secret; indeed by law had to be read aloud to the ship's company at least once a month, and the French were welcome to them.
Apart from the signal book, and some charts, that was all he needed.
Ramage turned to Jackson. 'Go to the Master's cabin and collect all the western Mediterranean charts and sailing instructions you can lay your hands on, and the Master's log. Bring them to me on the quarter-deck. Put them all in a seabag with a shot in the bottom, in case we have to dump them over the side in a hurry.'
He noticed a strange quietness beginning to settle over the ship and as he made his way out of the dark cabin, fumbling for the companionway leading to the quarter-deck, he realized wounded men had stopped moaning - or maybe they'd all been taken on deck out of earshot - and he could hear once again the familiar creak of the masts and yards, and the squeak of ropes rendering through blocks. And there was a less familiar noise - the slop of water down in the hold, and strange bumpings: presumably casks of meat, powder and various provisions floating around.
The ship herself felt sluggish beneath his feet: all the life, the normal quick reaction of the hull to the slightest movement of the rudder, the exhilarating surge forward as an extra strong gust of wind caught the sails, the lively pitch and roll as she rode the crests of the swell waves and plunged across the troughs - all that has gone. Instead, as if she has suffered some ghastly internal haemorrhage, the ton upon ton of water swilling and surging about down below as she rolls is exerting its weight first on one side and then on the other, constantly changing her centres of gravity and buoyancy, and playing fantastic juggling tricks with her stability.
The Sibella, he thought, shivering involuntarily, is dying, like some great animal lurching through the jungle, mortally wounded and capable of only a few more steps. If a sudden surge of water to one side or the other doesn't capsize her first, then once the weight of the water pouring in through the ragged shot holes in her hull equals the weight of the ship herself, she will sink. That's a scientific fact and only pumps, not prayers, can prevent it.
As Ramage climbed up to the quarter-deck he had a momentary impression of stepping into a cow shed: the stifled moans and gasps of the wounded men sounded like the lowing and snuffling of cattle. The Bosun was carrying out his orders quickly, and the last of the wounded were being brought up: Ramage stepped back a moment to let two limping men drag a third, who appeared to have a broken leg, to join the rest of them lying in rough rows at the forward end of the quarter-deck.
None of the Sibella's guns had fired for several minutes and the wind blowing through the ports had dispersed the smoke; but the smell of burnt gunpowder lingered on, clinging to his clothes, like the curious odour that hangs about a house long after flames have gutted it.
Yes, the Barms was where he had expected to see her - just forward of the beam and perhaps five hundred yards away. He suddenly realized she had not fired for three or four minutes. She had no need to: the damage was done. It was hard to believe that less than ten minutes had passed since the Barras made that slight change of course; even harder to realize that she first came in sight over the horizon only an hour ago.
Ramage heard the mewing of some gulls which had returned after the gunfire and were now wheeling in the Sibella's wake, waiting hopefully for the cook's mate to throw some succulent rubbish over the side.
Over the larboard beam, the north-western end of the Argentario peninsula was beginning to fade in the darkness rapidly spreading across the dome of the sky from the eastward. Just here the land curved away and flattened out into the marshland and swamp forming the Maremma, which stretch southward for almost a hundred miles, to the gates of Rome. The next big port was Civita Vecchia, thirty-five miles to the south. That was shut, on the Pope's orders, to both French and British ships.
To seaward, beyond and above the Barras - which was now, in the gathering night, little more than a silhouette - the Dog Star sparkled, a pale blue pinpoint of light like a diamond on dark velvet. The Dog Star, the chilly downdraught of wind from the maintopsail, the rattle of blocks, occasional hails from lookouts, and the creak of the masts and of the timbers in the ship's hull - for many months they had been as much a part of his life as hunger and chill, heat and tiredness. And all of it reduced to a shattered ship manned by shattered seamen within a few minutes of the sails on the horizon being recognized as belonging to a French line-of-battle ship. There had been no time to escape, and as the Barras ran down towards them she had seemed a thing of great beauty, gently dipping and rising in elegant curtsies as the swell waves passed under her, every stitch of canvas set, including studding sails. Even as she ranged herself abeam to windward, her ports open, and the stubby black barrels of her guns poking out like threatening fingers, she had still been a thing of beauty.
Suddenly she had vomited spurts of greyish yellow smoke which, quickly merging into one great bank, had hidden her hull from view. Then she had sailed out of it, trailing thin wisps of smoke from her gun ports, while the Sibella appeared to lurch as she was hit by an invisible hail of shot: iron shot ranging in size from small melons to large oranges and which at that range cut through three feet of solid timber, sloughing up splinters as thick as a man's thigh and as sharp as a sword blade.