‘Jackson – step over there and the rest join him. There – they are the twelve, and they have absolute priority in boarding: the rest of you must give ’em a hand if need be. After that, you’re all welcome to join the party!’
They laughed and there was a chorus of ‘Rely on us, sir!’
‘Fine. But no needless risks. If you can’t board the San Nicolas, try and save yourselves. Those hammocks piled up there will float and there’ll be plenty of wreckage. Grab anything for the moment and hang on. Don’t give up hope, however long you have to wait.
‘There’ll be a lot of smoke and a lot of noise, and there’s a danger you’ll mistake each other for Dons. So’ – Ramage was glad he’d just remembered – ‘the challenge is “Kathleen” and the reply…’ Damn, he couldn’t think of anything.
‘Nick!’ shouted a seaman.
‘Very well,’ Ramage grinned, ‘the reply is “Nick”. Not “Old Nick”, if you please!’
‘Kathleen!’ bawled a man.
‘Nick!’ roared the rest.
Ramage held up his hand.
‘The rendezvous – the San Nicolas’ quarterdeck!’
Again the men roared their approval.
‘And remember this: every halyard, every brace, every sheet you see – cut it! don’t go for the Dons first, go for the sheets and braces. With them cut, the ship’s helpless and then you can tackle the Dons. And make a noise – that’s what frightens ’em. Shout and slash – and challenge!’
‘Shout and slash!’ The men bellowed, ‘Kathleen, Nick! Shout and slash!’
Again Ramage held up his hand for silence.
‘Very well, men, time’s getting short. He glanced at the San Nicolas and to the men’s delight exclaimed, ‘It’s so short we’re up to the bitter end! Right, don’t hang around gossiping!’
With that he jumped down and beckoned to Edwards.
‘Get those braziers lit. Are the bags of powder properly dampened?’
‘Aye, sir, I’ve been trying some over a candle flame, like you said. Reckon I’ve got just the right dampness now.’
‘Carry on then!’
The San Nicolas’ starboard bow looked like the side of a large house viewed a hundred yards off. With the telescope Ramage looked again at the Spanish ship’s bowsprit and jib-boom, together more than eight feet long and jutting out from her bow like an enormous fishing rod. The inboard end, the bowsprit, would be some seventy feet long and probably three feet in diameter, but much of its length was inside the ship: coming in over the stem at a sharp angle, it was held by the heavy knightheads, passing down through the deck to butt up against its step just forward of the foremast. The jib-boom, the thinner extension of the bowsprit, was probably fifty feet long and a little over a foot in diameter.
The whole of Ramage’s plan was based on one essential fact of ship construction: because the foremast of a ship of the line, made up of four sections one above the other, was set so far forward, its main support forward came from stays leading down to the bowsprit and jib-boom. Destroy the outer end of the jib-boom and you could be fairly sure the jerk on the foreroyal stay would bring the highest, the foreroyal mast, toppling down, while smashing the whole jib-boom would probably bring down the topgallant mast as well. Breaking off the bowsprit where it passed over the figurehead would carry away the stays holding the foremast and foretopmast. In other words the whole mast could go by the board.
This defect in ship design was why every captain feared a collision; particularly feared that while sailing in line ahead at night or in fog he would get too close to the ship next ahead so that his jib-boom or bowsprit struck the other ship’s taffrail.
It was all a gamble, and Ramage knew it was useless calculating whether or not the puny Kathleen could do the job – that’s why he had chosen his dozen men. But because of the enormous bulk of the Spanish ship, the sheer heights involved made even the dozen men’s ability to board her a matter of chance. The top of the Kathleen’s bulwarks forward were ten feet above her waterline, and amidships only seven feet. Again Ramage cursed himself: there was a time when thinking merely wasted valuable minutes and acted like a powerful magnifying glass on your doubts. There were times – and this was one of them – where you copied the bull and not the matador: you put your head down and charged.
The braziers suddenly began to blaze as the kindling caught fire and set the men down to leeward coughing and spluttering. Ramage’s dozen men, led by Jackson, grouped round the larboard shrouds gripping their odd collection of cutlasses, half-pikes, tomahawks and butcher’s cleavers.
The San Nicolas was almost dead ahead, looming so large Ramage forced himself to look away.
‘I shall luff up for a moment, Mr Southwick, then turn to starboard. As soon as I give the word let fly all the sheets and halyards. Make sure they’re overhauled and ready to run.’
To the quartermaster he said: ‘Steer directly for the San Nicolas.’
He tucked his pad inside his shirt; pulled out the pistols, checked there was enough powder in the pans and jammed them back in his belt; then bent down to undo the strap over the sheath of the throwing knife inside his boot.
By the time he looked at the San Nicolas she was only eight hundred yards or so away.
‘Edwards! Smoke, please!’
Edwards bellowed down a hatch and men came scrambling up with wooden cartridge boxes, each going to a particular brazier. At the one farthest forward Edwards took the bag of powder from the box, slit the corner and gingerly shook some of the damp, caked gunpowder on to the burning brazier. At once thick clouds of oily yellow smoke billowed up.
Edwards ducked up to windward and looking aft called: ‘How’s that, sir?’
‘Fine, Edwards. Carry on with the rest of them!’
The men promptly extracted the bags, slit the ends and began shaking powder into the braziers. Within a minute billowing smoke covered the whole ship and Ramage ran to the weather side to get a clearer view as the acrid fumes set men coughing and gasping.
‘Quartermaster – come here and pass on my orders: the men at the helm will have to cough and bear it!’
A red eye winked at the San Nicolas’ bow, then another, as her bow-chasers fired and the puffs of smoke drifted ahead of the great ship. There was a sound like the tearing of canvas – the noise of shots passing close overhead. He counted the seconds – the Spaniards must have reloaded by now, but they did not fire. Perhaps they were confused at the sight of the cutter. From where he stood the smoke pouring up from the braziers hid the mainsail and he guessed it probably went high enough to hide the topsail as well. The rolling bank of yellow smoke, caught by the wind, was already obscuring the horizon to leeward.
Southwick walked up through the smoke, handkerchief over his mouth and nose, eyes redder than usual, and coughing.
‘We must look a fantastic sight, sir! I bet the Dons wonder what the devil’s gone wrong with us! I heard a couple of shots go overhead but that’s all.’
‘They haven’t fired again.’
Southwick looked ahead. ‘She’s a big bitch.’
Ramage grunted.
Southwick pointed over the larboard quarter.
The Captain, every inch of canvas drawing, was well over half-way between the British line and the Santísima Trinidad. As they watched, a hoist of flags broke out and fluttered from the Captain’s signal halyards.
‘Jackson – signal book!’ Ramage shouted, training the telescope. ‘Quickly – our pendant, numeral twenty-three! Mr Southwick, have it acknowledged. Well, Jackson? Hurry, man!’
‘Twenty-three, sir: “To take possession of the enemy’s ships captured”!’
Ramage laughed: the Commodore was a cool fellow to have time for jokes. Cool enough, he suddenly realized, to know the signal would be a tonic for the Kathleens.
‘Mr Southwick – pass the Commodore’s signal to the ship’s company!’
There was no time to comb the book for a witty reply; in fact both the book and the other papers in the weighted bag ought to have been sunk by now.
‘Jackson – put the book into the bag and heave it over the side!’
‘Now hear this!’ Southwick bellowed through the speaking trumpet (so loud, Ramage thought wrily, they’ll hear in the San Nicolas), ‘now hear this – an order from the Commodore to the Kathleen. We’ve got to take possession of all the enemy ships we capture! So no skulking off to the spirit room and getting beastly drunk just because you capture a two-decker: leave a couple of men in command, then use her boats to go over and take a three-decker! Leave the Santísima Trinidad for me personally!’
Few of the men could see Southwick but through the smoke came a volley of cheers mixed with happy roars of ‘Kathleen, Nick! Kathleen, Nick!’
Southwick grinned at Ramage, who merely nodded. He’d been watching the San Nicolas as the men cheered. No condemned man cheered the hangman when he recognized him. Fortunately the Kathleens didn’t recognize him, and they cheered.
Yet the Spaniards too had been overconfident: the San Nicolas’ anchor cables were already led out through the hawse and bent to the anchors – a thing usually done when the harbour was in sight because at sea the ends of the cables were stowed below. The carving of the St Nicolas figurehead was beautifully done, rich with gilt and flesh tones, even if the rest of the ship was shabby.
The last five hundred yards.
‘Jackson – are you all ready there?’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
‘Stand by the sheets and halyards, Mr Southwick!’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Now for it. Time was slowing down. Keep calm. Speak slowly.
‘Quartermaster, half a point to port,’ he drawled.
‘Half a point to port it is, sir.’
The slight alteration of course brought the San Nicolas round to fine on the cutter’s starboard bow, ready for the last-minute turn, and Ramage had to run forward to see her because of the smoke pouring from the braziers. Both ships were on almost opposite courses and as far as the Spaniards knew apparently going to pass each other to starboard and fifty yards apart.
And the smoke streaming up from the braziers along the Kathleen’s entire length was drifting off to leeward in a huge, ever-advancing bank into which the Spanish ship was heading. From the San Nicolas she must seem to be on fire from stem to stern.
Four hundred yards. Less, perhaps. With one foot on the forward carronade slide Ramage watched the two-decker ploughing on – enormous, relentless, implacable – and seemingly invulnerable. The sea curving up and over in thin feathers of water at her bow was pale green. Groups of men on her fo’c’sle were looking down at him. Both bow chasers flashed red and spurted smoke. Somewhere overhead he heard wood splintering.
This was a fish’s view of a fat angler on a river bank, the bowsprit and jib-boom jutting out like the rod in his hand. So much gilt and red and blue paint on the headrails. Popping of champagne corks – yes: Spanish soldiers kneeling and resting their muskets on the rail as they fired. She was pitching slightly in the swell waves – just enough to make aiming difficult. And they could see little to shoot at anyway because of the smoke. Only him, he suddenly realized: everyone else was farther aft. The foredeck felt lonely.
Three hundred yards. The San Nicolas’ standing and running rigging a complicated cobweb against her sails and the sky. St Nicolas’ features discernible, and he did not seem very saintly: a lot of pink paint on his cheeks – he looked as if he drank too much wine. Grape for the Saint, grapeshot for Nicholas.
Again the double flash of the bow-chasers: a dragon winking bloodshot eyes. So close the shot passing sounded like tearing calico. He could make out the seams in her hull planking. Greyish patches on the black paint where salt had dried. They must usually keep a canvas cover over the figurehead – or paint it once a week.
Two hundred yards. Plenty of popping now but he didn’t hear the ricochet of musket balls. The double crack of the bow-chasers – they can’t depress them enough now to hit the hull, but pray to God they don’t hit the mast
A Spanish officer waving his sword like a madman – twice over his head, then pointing at the Kathleen. Over his head again – curious fellow: maybe he’s trying to inspire his men. The great bulging sails so badly patched – seams stitched too tight and uneven so the material crinkled.
One hundred yards. He’d never smash that great jib-boom: it was like the trunk of a great pine tree sticking out over a precipice.
Perhaps the jib-boom but certainly not the bowsprit.
Waiting for the executioner’s axe to fall after you’ve put your head on the block must be like this. For God’s sake do something. Wait. Seventy-five yards. Wait, wait, wait! All right – turn round…
‘Mr Southwick! Ready at the halyards and sheets?’
Acknowledged. Then he remembered he’d already asked that. Ten seconds to go. Memory pictures sped through his head: Gianna, mother, father; the tower of Buranaccio in the moonlight when he rescued Gianna; Southwick’s excited bloodshot eyes; Jackson’s grin and Stafford’s imitation of the Commodore.
Turn again. Calmly. Loud enough for the man to hear.
‘Quartermaster! Helm hard a’port!’
The Kathleen’s bowsprit began swinging to starboard towards the San Nicolas. Slowly, oh so slowly. Too slowly! No, perhaps not. Anyway, too late to worry…
No – he’d timed it perfectly! The Kathleen’s foretopmast stay would hit the outer end of the San Nicolas’ bowsprit.
‘Mr Southwick! Let fly halyards and sheets!’
Beside him the banging of a blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil: musket balls hitting the barrel of the carronade. Musket balls aimed at him. Poor shooting.
Without looking up at the San Nicolas he turned and ran through the smoke to join the boarding party at the main shrouds. Several of the men, including Jackson, were already waiting half-way up the ratlines, looking ahead as the Kathleen’s sharp turn began to bring the San Nicolas into view, poised for the desperate leap to board her. He prayed no one would jump too soon and fall into the sea between the two ships. Splashing water – the San Nicolas’ bow wave!
He hitched round the cutlass belt so Southwick’s sword was out of the way, hanging behind him like a grotesque tail, and as he rammed his hat hard on his head there was the crack and snap of splintering wood and a jolt shook the cutter: God! She’d managed to get closer than he’d expected before her topmast stay hit the San Nicolas’ bowsprit A crash aloft – he didn’t bother to glance up: the stay had torn down the topmast.