Governor Ramage R. N. (22 page)

“The passengers are safe, his wheel isn't damaged, and he has nothing to use for a jury rig because, like us, he daren't risk keeping the wreckage alongside until the hurricane has passed.”

By two o'clock in the afternoon the
Triton
and
Topaz,
each a hulk but cleared of the wreckage of their masts, were wallowing along within a hundred yards of each other while overhead the clouds began to lift as the wind eased.

“Just look at it,” Southwick said angrily, pointing at the clouds. “If you didn't know, you'd think we were on the edge of a squall that'd blow itself out in half an hour.”

“Except for these seas!” Ramage said.

Southwick nodded, and looked nervously at the
Topaz.
“I just can't get used to being dismasted. Feel vulnerable.”

“Don't fret; I can't think anyone really gets used to it,”Ramage said cheerfully. “Now, everything's settled, so why don't you get some rest?”

The Master looked around the ship, as if anxious to make sure nothing had been left undone.

“Rest, Mr Southwick,” Ramage said finally. “I can make it an order, if you like.”

“Sorry, sir,” he said apologetically. “You're quite right. But you'll—”

“I'll call you if the weather worsens, but without sleep,” Ramage added with intentional harshness, knowing it was one of the few ways of persuading the old Master, “you're no use to anyone.”

Southwick nodded, excused himself and made his way below. If only the damned seas would ease: the
Triton
's motion was still violent. What had been forgotten? Ramage thought hard but nothing came to mind. His earlier idea of transferring everyone from the
Topaz
and abandoning her had been absurd: one glance over the side had shown the impossibility of that, apart from the fact that neither ship had a boat left.

He considered the possibility that another of the King's ships might sight the brig and take her in tow, but there was little hope of that: any ship within a week's sailing of this position was likely to be in as much trouble as the
Triton,
if not more. Nor were they now on any regular convoy track. Not even a privateer would come this way. The thought of a privateer brought him up with a start. It'd be a proud privateer that returned with the
Topaz
in tow. It would take practically no effort to capture her now, only patience. Wait for the weather to ease up, and then board her. Nor would the
Triton
be much more difficult; raking her by sailing across her bow and stern and staying out of the arcs of fire of her broadside guns …

Southwick was back on deck by five and cheerfully commenting on the speed with which the wind was dropping. The cloud was breaking up overhead, and the sea was easing slightly.

“Seems it goes quicker than it arrives!” Southwick said.

Ramage nodded. “I don't think the eye was in the centre.”

“Couldn't have been, sir. It's cleared in—how long?” He scratched his head, a puzzled look on his face.

“Damned if I know,” Ramage admitted. “We lost the masts about ten hours ago, I suppose. The hurricane began—hell fire. I can't remember. What day is it?”

Southwick shook his head helplessly. “We'll have to sit down and work it out, sir—and make up the entries for the log …”

By midnight the wind had dropped to a fresh breeze, stars were visible overhead through breaks in the cloud, and the seas were easing, although still running high. A muster of the ship's company showed four men missing, presumably lost when the brig broached. Considering the size of the waves and the speed with which it all happened, Ramage knew he had been lucky not to lose more. Six men killed by the
Peacock
and four by the hurricane.

Southwick, pleasantly surprised that only four had been lost, said cheerfully: “Think of it as fifty-one survivors, sir!”

S
TAFFORD was the first man to sight land a few moments before noon three days after the eye had passed. With all the watch gathered round and cheering, Ramage presented him with a guinea prize.

The Cockney, in his usual breezy way, spun the coin, kissed it for luck and said to Ramage: “Permission to ask a question, sir?”

Ramage nodded, although guessing the question would probably verge on impertinence.

“Did you ever reckon you'd ‘ave ter pay, sir?”

When Ramage looked puzzled, Stafford explained: “We was in the eye of the ‘urricane when you said you'd present a guinea ter ‘ooever saw land first. Didn't seem much chance we'd live long enough fer that, sir.”

Ramage decided that it was not the time to tell the ship's company that the offer of a guinea prize was all he could think of to cheer them up when things looked desperate. Instead he just smiled knowingly at Stafford and said: “I even guessed where the land would be!”

Stafford looked startled. “Cor—where is it, sir?”

“One of the Virgin Islands.”

“Virgins, sir? Wot,
‘ere?
”

Stafford's surprise was genuine and apparently shared by the rest of the men.

“Yes, several,” Ramage said, without a smile. “British and Danish. No French or Spanish.”

“No French or Spanish! D'yer ‘ear that!” Stafford poked Rossi in the ribs. “Nor no Eyetalian virgins, either!”

Ramage gestured to Jackson: “Right, now; make a signal to the
Topaz
—
Land in sight to the north-west.
”

The
Topaz
acknowledged it promptly, and Ramage saw Southwick hunched over the compass.

Ramage walked over to take bearings of each end of the island. Radiating out from where the compass box was fastened to the deck, and looking like the spokes of a wheel, a series of thin grooves had just been cut in the deck planking, the thickest corresponding to the fore and aft line. It was Southwick's idea and was a crude pelorus: it allowed a rough bearing to be taken without lifting up the compass.

Ramage picked up the slate from its new stowage on the forward side of the starboard aftermost carronade slide, and after checking the time wrote: “12.03 p.m. Sighted one of Virgin Islands NW X W½W, distant about twelve miles.”

“Let's have a cast of the log,” Ramage told Appleby.

Ten minutes later, as the master's mate supervised the men stowing the reel again, he noted the
Triton
's speed and the course being steered:

“Speed 1½ knots, course north, wind south, fresh.”

No log entry could describe seas that were no longer monstrous, clouds that no longer warned of unbelievable winds and rain the like of which few men ever saw and lived to describe. No log entry could tell how happy men were just to be alive, even though their ship was almost helpless, driven forward only by the pressure of the wind on the hull.

He looked over on the starboard quarter where the
Topaz
lumbered along, a great ox splashing through a muddy lane. She still looked smart, even without masts, bowsprit or jib-boom. If spars suddenly went out of fashion, the
Topaz
would rate as an elegant ship. For that matter masts have gone out of fashion, he reminded himself, at least around here.

Landfalls were curious: one usually waited days, if not weeks; but once the low grey shape—it always
was
a low grey shape—was spotted, it became a matter of the greatest urgency to identify it. This was no exception: St Croix stretched for more than thirty miles athwart their course: they could pass either east or west of it to make for one of the other islands beyond. But if it was, say, Virgin Gorda, then they had to get to the westward quickly before they ran on to the reefs littering that end of the islands.

“You're smiling, sir,” Southwick, who had just come on deck, said: “St Croix?”

“Virgins,” Ramage said. “I was thinking that Columbus must have been in a whimsical mood when he passed through those islands and named them.”

“How so?”

“Virgin Gorda, up to the east. It would have been the first of them he sighted. It means ‘The Fat Virgin!'”

“He'd been at sea a long time?” Southwick suggested.

“No, not at that point, but the islands were being sighted thick and fast.”

“Puerto Rico,” Southwick said. “That does mean ‘Rich Port,' doesn't it?”

“Yes.”

“But why name a whole island ‘Rich Port?'”

“He didn't—so the story goes: it was a mistake made in Madrid.”

“How come, sir?”

“Because he sighted the island on St John's Day he named the island ‘San Juan' after him. Then he found a deep bay on the north coast—a perfect natural harbour, and the soil was obviously rich. So he named the harbour ‘Puerto Rico.'”

“Ah,” Southwick exclaimed, slapping his knee, “so when he reported back, some clerk got ‘em mixed up!”

When Ramage nodded, the Master said: “But why have they never put it right?”

“The mistake probably arose in Court—Columbus reported directly to the King. Either the King did not notice the mistake, or would not draw attention to it later.”

“I can't see anyone pointing it out to him, either!”

“Well, whatever happened it's been that way for three hundred years!”

Southwick pulled out his watch, looked first at the grey smudge ahead and then at the
Triton
's wake, and sniffed disapprovingly. “Thirty minutes. Hasn't exactly leapt up over the horizon.”

“We're not exactly galloping towards it!”

In an hour he'd know whether they would pass the eastern or western end. Two things could upset the calculations—a strong west-going current, and easterly winds: both would push the
Triton
and
Topaz
to the westwards. They needed the present southerly wind to continue, but it was an unusual wind. Almost certainly, once the effect of the hurricane had worn off, it would fly back to the eastern quadrant; the Trades would return.

An hour later Southwick took another bearing of the eastern end of St Croix. Even before he plotted it on the chart, Ramage knew they had no choice: they would pass the western end because the current was setting the
Triton
down to the west.

When he marked it on the chart, drawing in the
Triton
's track for the last hour, it was increasingly obvious that it was going to be a struggle even to keep up to the east enough to be sure of making St Thomas, thirty miles beyond St Croix. To the westward of St Thomas, some seventy miles away, was Puerto Rico. Ramage had no wish to spend even a few weeks, let alone months or years, in a Spanish prison …

Back on deck Southwick was pacing up and down and Ramage wondered what had angered him. Before he noticed the Captain had come up the companion-way, the Master bent over the compass again, his eye travelling along one of the grooves in the deck planking and over the bow to the eastern end of St Croix. Then he saw Ramage.

“Should never have lost all the spars,” he said wrathfully. “Not to be able to set up
any
sort of jury rig. Who'd have thought we'd have nothing left?”

“We couldn't have saved anything,” Ramage said mildly. “I was damned glad to see it all go. I'd no wish to see a topmast surfing itself through our hull planking like a swordfish and sinking us.”

“Well, no, sir, but if only we could set a stitch of canvas now we would weather the eastern end of that damned island. As it is, we'll be hard put to have it still in sight as we pass to the westward.”

“No matter what jury rig you could contrive, Mr Southwick, don't forget you'd have to make a duplicate for the
Topaz
. . .”

“By jingo, yes! We couldn't leave her!”

“Well, then,” Ramage said, shrugging his shoulders.

“But it doesn't stop me wanting to keep up to the eastward,” Southwick said stubbornly. “It's only natural. All my life I've been trained never to lose an inch to leeward.”

“Me too,” Ramage said sarcastically. “I joined the same Navy. But we aren't trying to get the weather gage of a French squadron.”

“True, sir. By the way, we opened another cask of salt pork today. Six pieces short.”

Ramage nodded and knew Southwick's mood of depression had passed. When the Master mentioned such mundane things, all was well.

All was well, and some dishonest contractor to the Admiralty had made his usual illicit extra profit, by filling the cask with brine and a few pieces of salt pork less than the number he painted on the outside giving the alleged contents.

It was sometimes hard to think of the Navy as a fighting force, Ramage reflected; it seemed to be an enormous organization where contractors—whether supplying salt pork or beef, timber from the Baltic, rum from the West Indies, butter and dried pease, shirts for the pursers to sell or flax for the sails—made great profits selling items which were underweight or of poor quality.