Ramage called to Jackson, pointed aloft and in a moment the American was on his way up the ratlines. Although Appleby's eyesight was good he hadn't Jackson's experience in identifying ships.
Considering it was the first time they had done it since he'd been in command, Ramage noted the ship's company in
had gone to quarters quickly without the excited nervousness that caused delays: the guns' crews were ready with rammers, waiting only for me powder to be brought up from below; the deck was already running with water and several men were sprinkling sand, so that bare feet would not slip and no stray grains of powder could be ignited by friction.
It was time for Ramage to go down to his cabin and check once again the day's private signals—the secret challenge and reply by which ships of the Royal Navy could distinguish friend from foe.
The signals, kept in a locked drawer in his desk, comprised several pages held together by a heavy slotted lead seal which had been squeezed together so the slot closed tightly along the left-hand edge of the sheets. That alone indicated their importance, and a warning on the first page, twice underlined, said captains were 'strictly commanded to keep them in their own possession, with sufficient weight affixed to them to insure their being sunk if it should be found necessary to throw them overboard'. And, it added, any officer disobeying would be court martialled because 'consequences of the most dangerous nature to His Majesty's Fleet may result from the Enemy's getting possession of these Signals'.
The signals themselves were simple to understand, listing the nags to be flown from the foretopmasthead and the maintopmasthead, and the flags to be flown as a reply by the other ship. Since both signals were given it did not matter which ship challenged first.
The important thing was the date. Only ten challenges and replies were listed, and the final figure in the date was the one that mattered. In the first column headed 'Day of the Month' were, one beneath the other, the figures 1, 11, 21 and 31 Below that was a second group, 2, 12, 22 and followed by 3, 13, 23 and so on until it reached 10, 20, 30. Beside each group were the flags to be flown on those dates —and on this occasion the Navy used civil time, the new day beginning at midnight.
Since it was the 20th day of April Ramage ran his finger along the last set of figures, '10, 20, 30'. Beside them it gave the first signal to be flown and the flags forming the reply.
After locking up the signals Ramage went back on deck, where Southwick was waiting.
'Pendant over red and white at the main; white with blue cross at the fore. The reply is pendant over blue white blue at the main; blue white red at the fore.'
'Very good, sir.'
Within a few moments he had several seamen busy bending the flags on to the appropriate halyards ready for hoisting, and then Jackson called down that he thought the ship was a British frigate.
Swiftly her sails lifted above the horizon as she sailed up over the curvature of the earth towards the Triton; soon Ramage could see her hull coming into sight.
'Hoist the challenge, Mr Southwick!'
Suddenly the long, triangular-shaped pendant and the red and white flag soared up the mainmast, and the single white flag with a blue cross was being hoisted at the foremast.
Only a few seconds after the flags streamed out in the wind Jackson called down:
'Deck there! She's breaking out a couple of hoists ... Blue white red at the fore... Pendant, then blue white blue at the main, sir!'
Southwick acknowledged and motioned to the men at the halyards, and immediately the two hoists were lowered.
'Make our number, Mr Southwick!'
A few moments later the Union Flag with three flags beneath it representing the Triton's number in the List of the Navy was streaming out from the maintopmasthead.
The frigate had been the Rover, bound for Portsmouth from Lord St Vincent's squadron, and it had taken only fifteen minutes for Ramage to go on board and report to her captain, warning him the Fleet at Spithead was in a state of mutiny, and persuade him to take Dyson and Brookland on board without asking too many questions. Few captains raised objections to getting a couple of extra seamen.
Both men had asked to see him before leaving the Triton and, to his surprise, Dyson had requested that he be allowed to stay on board. For a moment Ramage had almost relented; then he thought of the ship's company. He was sure the man would never try any nonsense again; but his mere presence in the Triton would be a constant reminder that a mutiny had once been planned. The former Kathleens would certainly never trust him and it might eventually make his life unbearable and in turn lead to more trouble.
But before dismissing both men Ramage reassured them that as far as the captain of the Rover knew, they were simply two seamen just flogged for drunkenness. And that was true: for his own sake Ramage didn't want the captain of the Rover arriving in Portsmouth with the news that the Triton had nearly been taken by a mutinous crew. As it was, the captain had been puzzled at the request and would have refused had he not known of Ramage's part in the Battle of Cape St Vincent.
In the late afternoon the Rover's topgallants disappeared below the horizon to the north-east. In a few hours she'd be off the Lizard and bearing away up Channel. By that time the Triton would have met Admiral Curtis's squadron.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Tropics: to Ramage they were always magic words, but as he stood at the taffrail watching the brig's wake he knew the hot sun, blue sea and sky and the cooling Trade winds had done more than anything to make the Triton a happy ship. Now, looking at the men cheerfully going about their work or listening to them dancing to John Smith the Second's fiddle as the sun set, it was impossible to know who was an original Kathleen and who a Triton. Tanned, fit, cheery—and well-trained: all a captain could ask of a ship's company.
After finding Admiral Curtis's squadron off Brest, the Triton met Lord St Vincent's squadron twenty miles from Cadiz. After delivering the First Lord's letter, Ramage had answered ten brief questions—brief, but searching—and after a gruff 'Have a good voyage' from the Admiral, made sail bound for the Canary Islands, there to pick up the North-east Trade winds which would carry the brig before them for nearly three thousand miles in a great sweeping curve across the Atlantic to a landfall off Ragged Point, the eastern tip of Barbados.
After leaving Lord St Vincent's squadron, their last sight of land had been Cape Spartel, the north-western corner of the Barbary Coast. From then on a stiff but constant north wind gave them a fast run south towards the Canaries.
Rather man lose the chance the northerly gave them of getting as far as possible to the south with a 'soldier's wind' before meeting the Trades—as well as make an accurate departure—Ramage decided to risk a chance encounter with any Spanish warships patrolling His Most Catholic Majesty's Atlantic islands by passing close to Tenerife, me most imposing of them all.
It had come up over the horizon looking like a series of "
sharp-crested storm waves petrified in an instant by a wilful Nature in a petulant mood. And for once the sharp edges, topped by the perfect cone of the volcano Teide, were sharp and clear, instead of being hidden in cloud; through the telescope Ramage could see wide black ribbons down the side of the mountain where streams of lava recently pouring from the crater had solidified.
For a day and a night after that the Triton had run south, still holding a soldier's wind; then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the wind had in a few hours eased round to the northeast and the Triton had followed, her course curving down to the south-west, out into the open Atlantic and leaving the Cape Verde Islands just out of sight to the south.