CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ramage woke next morning with a taste in his mouth as though he had been sucking a pistol ball and a head which throbbed like a drum beating to quarters. He shouted for his steward and regretted it a moment later as pain as sharp as a knife blade stabbed his temples. He'd certainly supped well on board the flagship, but wisely? Had he talked too much? Been indiscreet? Revealed too much about his thoughts? He didn't know; but he must have been quite drunk by the time he came back on board the Kathleen.

He suddenly saw a letter on his desk and as his cot swung reached out and grabbed it. Written orders from Sir John - at dawn the Kathleen would take up and maintain a position five miles ahead of the Fleet. He looked at his watch - it was 7 a.m., an hour or more after dawn. At that moment the steward came into the cabin and was promptly sent off to fetch the Master.

Southwick arrived looking cheerful but obviously tired, and seeing the surly expression on Ramage's face as he held the letter said, 'Good morning sir. Don't worry about that - we're in position.'

'But how—?'

'When you came on board you mentioned something about orders, sir, and as you seemed a bit - er, tired, I took the liberty of taking the letter out of your pocket and opening it after you'd gone to bed.'

'Tired be damned,' growled Ramage, 'I was drunk.'

'You did mention, sir, that the admiral hoped to sight the Dons today.'

'Today or tomorrow. He thinks that if the Dons left Cartagena on time and ran into that gale, they'd have been swept even farther out into the Atlantic than we were, because they probably wouldn't have been able to heave-to. They should be working their way back to Cadiz now and we are stretching across their probable route...'

'Then with a bit o' luck we'll be the first to sight 'em!' The prospect clearly pleased the Master, who patted his stomach as if anticipating a good meal.

'Don't make any mistake this time, Southwick. Give me that paper on the desk - thank you. I worked this out yesterday. Sir John has fifteen sail of the line and the Spaniards twenty-seven. Seven of them carry more guns than any of our ships. Wait until you see the Santisima Trinidad - she's enormous. It all adds up to fifteen British sail of the line carrying 1,232 guns against twenty-seven Spanish sail of the line carrying 2,308. Which gives the Dons an advantage of 1,076 guns. Nearly twice as many as us in fact...'

'Well,' Southwick said placidly, 'we're not outnumbered then.'

'What!' Ramage exploded. 'Don't be so—'

Southwick grinned. 'They'd have to be carrying 3,696 guns - don't forget one Englishman equals three Spaniards.'

'Men, not guns,' snapped Ramage. 'That kind of reasoning is ridiculous.'

The steward brought in an urn of tea and Ramage motioned him to pour a cup for Southwick as well.

'You're half right, though,' he conceded. 'Men have to fire the guns.'

'I worked out that when we took La Sabinawe were outnumbered about four to one, but it didn't seem to worry you.'

'It worried me all right, but' - he recalled the look on the admiral's face the previous evening - 'it worried Sir John even more. In fact—'

There was a knock on the door and Jackson burst in. 'Sail in sight, sir, on the starboard bow.'

Ramage glanced up at the tell-tale compass above his head.

'Hoist the signal “Strange sail" and the compass pendants. Beat to quarters, Mr. Southwick.'

Southwick followed Jackson on deck while Ramage hurriedly washed and dressed. By the time he was on deck the signal flags for a strange sail and its compass bearing were streaming in the wind, giving their warning to the Fleet just in sight astern - the Kathleen was carrying out her task of increasing the Fleet's visible horizon by another five miles, like a giant telescope, signal flags taking the place of optical lenses.

Jackson, perched up the mast beside the lookout, shouted: 'Deck there! She's a frigate.'

'Mr. Southwick, haul down "Strange sail" and hoist "Strange sail is frigate".'

A few minutes later Jackson called, 'Captain, sir - she might be the Minerve.'

She could be; the Blanche and Minerve were both with Commodore Nelson. But he wasn't going to take chances: the frigate could not see the Fleet to leeward yet and might have been captured by the Spanish, and now eager to snap up a small cutter.

Once again the familiar drum beat echoed across the Kathleen's decks and the drummer had just tucked his sticks into his boot-top and was unhitching his drum amid a rush of men to the guns when Jackson again hailed.

'She's the Minerve all right, sir, and she's flying a broad pendant.'

'Very well. Mr. Southwick, warn the Fleet and signal its bearing for the Minerve - I doubt if she can see it yet. I'm going below to shave.'

By the time Ramage came back on deck, feeling a lot fresher, the Minerve was close enough for her bow wave to look like a white moustache at her stem. As she ran down towards the cutter, Ramage was reminded of the ridge and furrow flight of a woodpecker as she rose and fell on the overtaking swell waves. There was hardly a wrinkle in her straining sails, but almost every one of them had been patched several times. The sailmaker and his mates must have been busy. Ramage would have given a lot to know if the Commodore had sighted the Spanish Fleet at sea ... An hour after the Minerve rounded up to leeward of the Victory, Jackson reported to Ramage that the flagship was signalling for the Kathleen's captain. As he stood in his cabin, the steward hurriedly brushing his coat, straightening his stock, and carefully brushing his new cocked hat, Ramage wasn't sure whether he was apprehensive or pleased. Either the Commodore considered he had disobeyed orders and Sir John had decided to take action, or - oh well, he'd know soon enough.

All the time that the Kathleen ran down to the Victory, and while he was being rowed over to the flagship, Ramage deliberately thought of other things: of Gianna, whether or not he had left out too much in his official report to Sir John, and which he now had in his pocket, and where Cordoba's Fleet was.

He scrambled up the three-decker's side, acknowledged the regulation salutes made to him as the commanding officer of one of His Majesty's ships, and was just about to look round for the first lieutenant when he was startled at the sight of Sir Gilbert Elliot walking towards him, hand outstretched and a broad grin on his face.

'Well, young man, you didn't expect to see me here!'

Ramage saluted and shook the hand of the former Viceroy.

'Hardly, sir!'

'And you nearly didn't, by God! We spent the night before last in the midst of the Spanish Fleet!'

At that moment Ramage saw the tiny figure of Commodore Nelson leave the admiral's cabin and walk towards them.

'Ah,' said Sir Gilbert, 'my dear Commodore, you see whom we have here?'

'Yes, indeed. Well, Mr. Ramage, you seem to have been busy since you left us at Bastia, eh? So have we. We've evacuated the Mediterranean, the Viceroy and I. And,' he added almost bitterly, 'we've left it a French and a Spanish lake. They can go boating without fear.'

The voice had the same high pitch, the same nasal intonation, but the man himself had undergone a subtle change. At Bastia Ramage had tried to define the curious aura about him, like the glow from a gem stone; but now whatever it was seemed even stranger. The one good eye - yes, he realized with a shock, it had the same look that Southwick's had at the prospect of battle.

'Don't mumble,' the Commodore said sharply. 'Sir John tells me that so far you've admitted disobeying orders, surrendering your ship, being taken prisoner and adopting a subterfuge to escape, playing the spy, burgling honest men's houses and reading their private letters - don't you call that being busy?'