He thought for a moment and glimpsed La Créole out of the corner of his eye. The French would not be at all surprised to see a French schooner stretching south a couple of miles off the Diamond Hill headland: they would recognize the hull and rig, and naturally assume that she was a French privateer coming down to meet them, or leaving Fort Royal on a cruise. What other explanation could there be, from a French point of view? None that he could think of: sighting a French privateer would seem like a good sign. It would suggest to the convoy that there might be no British frigates around at all and that Fort Royal was not being blockaded.
That would cheer them all up and they would surely be confident enough to follow the usual easy route and hug the coast all the way round to the Fours Channel to avoid the current. They might even notice the French privateer hoisting a signal - perhaps a single flag. They would not understand it but they would not worry. In fact the privateer could hoist a Tricolour. The French naval officers might joke about the casualness of privateer captains not identifying themselves, but they would have no reason to suspect that La Créole was no longer a French ship, and was flying the Tricolour up to the time of opening fire as a legitimate ruse de guerre...
Using La Créole as his lookout was a far better idea than relying on the Juno battery. It would allow the battery lookouts to signal round the corner to the Juno herself. He was now pacing up and down with his shoulders braced back. It was a splendid plan and it worked perfectly - if the Juno battery comprised ten 24-pounders instead of two 12-pounders and the Ramage battery had five 24-pounders and if he had five fully-manned frigates instead of two partly-manned and, of course, providing the French convoy had a weak escort... But he had to make do with what he had. Anyway all this planning and fretting and fussing would probably prove unnecessary because Admiral Davis would arrive in plenty of time with the Invincible and some frigates or because the convoy would be late. On the other hand, a French ship of the line could be escorting the convoy and perhaps La Mutine had never arrived with the message.
He watched Southwick board from the jolly boat and saw that Wagstaffe was on his way from La Créole. Aitken, Lacey and Rennick were already on board, so he went to his cabin to lay out the chart and measure off some distances and bearings.
By dusk, as he watched Aitken and Wagstaffe being rowed to their ships, he felt a little more confident. Lacey was preparing a cutter to take over the men who would form the rest of the Surcouf’s ship's company. At least there were a dozen men who had been on board the former French frigate since she had been captured and, as Southwick had pointed out, by now they should know where everything was stowed.
The jolly boat was on its way to the Marchesa battery with written orders for the Juno and Ramage batteries, telling them that they were not to open fire or in any way reveal their presence until either the Juno or the Surcouf made the signal. The petty officer was told to place the signal mast on the western slope of the peak, where the signals he made would be seen by La Créole to seaward but not by French ships approaching from Pointe des Salines.
The Master offered to work out a new general quarters, watch and station bill for the Juno's reduced complement, and Ramage accepted gratefully. He also accepted Aitken's suggestion that all the former Tritons should stay on board the Juno. 'They bring you luck, sir,' the Scotsman had commented. 'You've been through a lot with them and now's not the time to tamper with Lady Fortune.'
As Ramage went down to his cabin he felt guilty about poor Southwick. He had more than an hour's work dividing the men into various groups - fo'c'sle men, foretopmen, maintopmen, mizentopmen, after guard, gunners - then he had to divide them into two watches, starboard and larboard, and finally give each man a number showing his place when the ship went into action, what arms he would carry for boarding or repelling boarders, his station for furling, reefing or loosing sails, anchoring or weighing, tacking the ship or wearing, making or shortening sail. It was a tedious, job, but it meant a seaman who knew that his number was, for example, 16 could see from the bill that he was a foretopman in the larboard watch, and when going into action he was second captain of a particular gun, that under arms he would have a cutlass and a tomahawk, and for the rest of the evolutions the bill showed him precisely what he did on the foretopsail yard. The Juno's original bill was for a full complement of 212 officers and men. Now Southwick had to make sure that every important task was performed using only sixty-three.
He could hear the clop-clop-clop of the pawls on La Créole's windlass as the schooner weighed to resume her patrol and make sure that by daybreak she would be off Diamond Hill. By then the Juno and the Surcouf would be under way and heading for Petite Anse d'Arlet, where they would anchor and wait, watching La Créole for signals with even more concentration than a fisherman waited for the float on his line to twitch.
He wondered what the Governor of Fort Royal made of the various pieces of information he was receiving. By now cavalry patrols along the coast must be reporting a great deal of activity off the Diamond, and he might be speculating what the Juno had been doing while hidden behind the island. The patrols might have heard the ranging shots of the Juno battery, though it was very unlikely they would have guessed where they came from.
He was taking a risk that the Governor might find a way of warning the convoy, but it was a slight one. There were only two ways of passing such a warning - sending out a vessel in the hope that it would find the convoy, or making a signal once it was in sight of the coast. Well, La Créole's frequent looks at Fort Royal and the patrol off the coast made sure that no pnivateers escaped to raise the alarm, and there were no signal masts anywhere along the coast. If the French hurriedly erected one at Pointe des Salines - the obvious place - it would be spotted by La Créole and he could land Marines to demolish it. But in any case the commander of the convoy escort would not be looking for signals: he would know there were no regular signal stations and, not expecting to receive signals, he would be unlikely to spot any made from the shore. There was just a possibility that a small fishing vessel was available in one of the two little harbours on the Atlantic side of the island, but the chance of such a craft being able to beat out against the Trade winds to get to the convoy in time - for its position was not known - was slight enough for him to ignore.
No, as long as he could keep the door shut on the privateers in Fort Royal and keep a sharp eye open for any sign of a signal mast being erected along the coast, especially at Pointe des Salines, he had little to fear. Meanwhile the Governor must be a very frustrated man.