CHAPTER THREE

By sunset the coastline to the north was a thin, purple band with several gold-tipped peaks to the west, flat land to the northeast - the Camargue and the marshy mouth of the Rhône - and the Alps of Provence to the east, as if balancing the Languedoc peaks at the other end of a seesaw.

Ramage watched Southwick examine the mountains of Languedoc with his telescope and then pick up his quadrant, holding it horizontal to measure the angles between three of them and noting down the figures.

He looked at the chart as the master put the quadrant away in its baize-lined mahogany box and guessed he must be using Mount Caroux, a second peak just east of Montpellier which was not named, and another anonymous one (as far as the chart was concerned) northwest of Minerve.

'Just where we wanted to be, sir', Southwick reported.

'Not so far from Roquefort sur Soulzon', Ramage commented.

'Is that so, sir?'

'The cheese, you know.'

'I'm sure you're right, sir', Southwick said cautiously.

'You don't know what the devil I'm talking about', Ramage said, laughing. 'Double Gloucester - now, you'd recognize that!'

'Oh, you mean a cheese for eating? A French one. This - what was it you said, Rockyfour - it comes from near here?'

'Yes, from a place up in those mountains you were looking at. Made from ewe's milk and left in caves to age.'

'Ewe's milk, sir?' Southwick repeated suspiciously. He thought about it for a few moments. 'I don't think I'd fancy sheep's milk cheese.'

'You ought to try the Italian goat's milk cheese - so strong that it lifts the top off your head. That's why so many Italian men are bald and have to wear hats.'

Southwick instinctively removed his hat and ran his fingers through his mop of white hair. 'Is that so, sir? Why do they eat it, then?'

'No, I'm only joking, but it's strong stuff.'

At that moment a screeching from forward revealed that the big grindstone had been brought up from below and Marines and seamen were starting to - in their words - 'put a sharp' on cutlass, bayonet and tomahawk blades, and the triangular points of boarding pikes.

A lanky, sandy-haired seaman came up to Ramage and saluted. 'Permission to collect your sword from your cabin and sharpen it, sir, and load your pistols.'

Ramage felt guilty about both sword and pistols: they had been given to him by Gianna. The sword was a splendid example of the work of one of the best sword cutlers in London, Mr Prater at Charing Cross, and the pistols were a fine, matched pair which she had bought him from Mansfield, in Bond Street, when he was made post. But in fact he preferred to use a seaman's cutlass and have a pair of heavy Sea Service pistols hanging at his waist by their belt hooks. Sword blades could shatter; a pistol once fired was often flung at the enemy's head as a last resort. He might hesitate for a second if he used Gianna's gifts - and a second could make all the difference between life and death. But the landing? This was a time when he could use them, and he realized that Jackson thought the same. The American seaman had been with him several years and had an uncanny knack of reading his captain's thoughts - uncanny because sometimes he seemed to anticipate what the captain would decide before Ramage had even considered the point.

'Ah, you consider this a good occasion to give the Marchesa's presents an airing?'

'Yes, sir', Jackson said firmly. 'Knowing her, I reckon the next time she sees you she's going to want to know how many Frogs you've spitted with the sword and shot with the pistols, and, beggin' your pardon, sir, you ain't much of a hand at telling lies. Leastways, not to the Marchesa.'

'You flatter me', Ramage said ironically, but Southwick, who had overheard the conversation and knew Gianna almost as well as Jackson, said firmly: 'He's right, sir. The Marchesa's bound to want to know, and she'll be hurt if you tell her a tale.'

'So you think tonight's attack is going to be a peaceful affair?' Ramage teased Southwick. 'That's why you haven't been trying to persuade me to let you go?'

'No, sir', Southwick answered promptly. 'At my age I don't fancy traipsing over miles of sand and maquis. It's my feet that aren't willing! Find us a French frigate to board, and I'll be an eager volunteer. But this walking round the countryside...'

As soon as the American was out of earshot, Southwick commented: 'I wonder how many times he's prepared your sword and pistols? A few dozen, I reckon.'

With the shadows lengthening across the deck, Ramage watched as Kenton and Martin stood in the two cutters, checking their contents before they were hoisted out. Earlier he had seen Jackson - who as captain's coxswain was responsible for the gig - going over the various items with Paolo. The boy had taken the task very seriously and Jackson, several inches taller, had bent to listen to him. Jackson had checked the gig, or whatever boat the captain was going to use, hundreds of times before in previous years and could do it blindfolded, but he had the patience and, Ramage guessed, the affection, to go over it with Paolo as though this was the first time.

The wind was still light and it was time to be heading back for the coast. No one with a spyglass would be able to see that a frigate was steering the opposite course. Nor would they notice her later heave-to and hoist out boats, to be towed astern ...

William Martin suddenly realized that it was two months to the day since the port admiral at Gibraltar had given him orders to join the Calypso, newly arrived from the West Indies. He was, the admiral said, replacing a fourth lieutenant who had quit in Gibraltar after being appointed to her in Jamaica, because the original second lieutenant had been killed in action (and the captain wounded), so the other lieutenants had moved up a place - Wagstaffe went from third to second, Kenton moved up to third and a new man had been sent over as fourth.

The new man must have had fancy ideas. Martin had since gathered that he was a favourite of the commander-in-chief at Jamaica, and after the spaciousness of a 74-gun ship of the line he probably found a frigate small. Martin also suspected that Wagstaffe, now away taking to Gibraltar the French frigate they had captured, and Kenton, had taken a dislike to the new lieutenant. They were an easygoing pair. Wagstaffe lanky and viewing life outside the ship as a humorous affair, while Kenton, small and red-haired, his face always red and peeling from sunburn, took very little interest in anything happening beyond the ship but had Wagstaffe's same amused attitude towards naval life. This occasionally shocked Martin, to whom the volume of Regulations and Instructions, and the slim copy of the Articles of War, were like a Bible.

Anyway, the pair of them had been very good to William Martin, the new fourth lieutenant replacing the fellow who quit, and he was lucky they and the captain (and the first lieutenant) liked his flute and encouraged him to play it. Certainly the ship's company enjoyed it, and John Smith the Second, who had been the ship's fiddler for years, was thankful not to have to fetch out his fiddle when the men wanted to dance to the tune of some forebitters or old favourites from one of Thomas Gay's operas, which Martin enjoyed playing of an evening.

Martin took a cutlass from the pile now lying on the deck by the grindstone and tested its edge. It had been well sharpened. Occasionally a careless man holding the blade to the stone would burr over the edge but, judging by the way this one was done, the man might well have been an itinerant knife grinder before being swept up by a pressgang. 'Knives to grind, scissors to mend!' Martin could remember the tinkers walking the streets of Rochester and Chatham, their grindstone fitted to a wheelbarrow, their jug of water to whet the stone, and their cry, many of them with the addition of 'pots to mend! Put a sharp on y'scissors, ladies!'