He ordered two of the magazine men to get a couple of small barrels and then fill them with powder; another to get a lump of pitch and a ball of caulking cotton from the carpenter’s mate, and two pieces of leather and some marline from the bosun’s mate and bring them to him at the main hatch. With that Edwards went to see the captain.
He saluted Ramage and said apologetically: ‘I know we are at quarters, sir, but I need to heat up some pitch.’
Ramage knew the man too well to question the necessity, but for safety the galley fire had been doused immediately the drum beat to quarters. The only light left in the ship was illuminating the magazine. He remembered the little oil-lamp left behind by the Kathleen’s previous captain.
‘The oil-lamp for heating my tea urn will do. Get my steward to bring it up from the cabin. You’ve thought of a way of securing the portfires?’
Edwards nodded and pointed to the paper and pencil on the binnacle. ‘May I just show you, sir?’
He drew a quick sketch and Ramage nodded. ‘Wedge it among the bags so there’s no chance of it moving. And make sure the canvas over the boat is wet so it doesn’t catch fire.’
Edwards nodded. ‘I’m afraid we’ll probably lose three minutes on the portfires, sir: I hadn’t allowed for the base going into the barrel. Difficult to know exactly when the burning part will reach the powder. I can’t guarantee anything more than twelve to fifteen minutes.’
Ramage thought quickly. The boat would be drifting for perhaps three minutes. Well, the first one was only a demonstration, so whether it exploded fifty or a hundred yards from the hulk wouldn’t matter much.
‘Very well, you can’t help that. Carry on, then.’
Within a couple of minutes Edwards was sitting on the coaming at the forward side of the main hatch with one small wooden barrel filled with powder held between his knees, bung uppermost, and another nearby. Beside him on his left were two portfires – fifteen-inch-long cylindrical tubes filled with a composition of saltpetre, sulphur and gunpowder mealed by treating it with spirits of wine, and which when lit burned steadily like a large Roman candle at the rate of an inch a minute.
On Edwards’ right were a pair of scissors, a brass pricker looking like a large darning needle stuck into a wooden handle, two squares of soft leather, a ball of marline (the light tar on the line mingled curiously with the cobbler’s shop smell of the leather) and a chunk of pitch chipped from a large piece, black and shiny like coal but already beginning to dull and soften slightly in the sun, and a battered saucepan in which to heat it.
Three men stood round the gunner’s mate holding leather buckets of water and each with strict orders to douse the powder-filled barrels at a word from Edwards, who picked up one of the pieces of leather and, standing a portfire on it, marked out the circular shape of its base using the tip of the brass pricker. He cut out the circle with the scissors and then with the same preoccupied air of a schoolboy pushing a pencil through a square of paper, slipped the portfire into the hole, making sure it was a tight fit.
At that moment a seaman came up to report the captain’s oil-lamp was lit, and went away with the pitch and saucepan with orders to start heating it. ‘Just runny,’ Edwards said, ‘don’t let it start bubbling.’
With a warning glance at the men standing round, Edwards gently drew the bung from the barrel, carefully folding the cloth in which it had been wrapped so that none of the slate-grey grains of powder still adhering to it should fall on the deck, and handing it to one of the men to drop in a bucket. Then he worked the piece of leather with the hole in it into the bung-hole, flattening it out with his fingers inside the barrel and over the top of the powder to act as a washer so that it covered the powder except for the hole he had cut out.
He worked his index finger in the powder until he made a cavity three inches deep, picked up the portfire and pushed it through the leather washer and into the powder until the portfire stuck up out of the bung-hole like a candle on a cake. Taking up the roll of marline he tucked an end between the leather and the inside of the barrel and began to wind it round and round the base of the portfire, as though rewinding a cotton reel, pausing every now and again to push it down until the portfire was a tight fit in the bung-hole, and leaving a shallow depression all round.
He called for the hot pitch and the seaman came running from the fo’c’sle with the old saucepan. Edwards inspected the pitch in case it was too hot, then gently poured some on to the marline wound round the portfire in the bung-hole, filling up the circular depression, He then wound on more turns of marline, pushing them down with the pricker, and poured on more pitch, using the pricker to shape it so that when it set there would be a little mountain of pitch stuck up on the barrel with the portfire sticking out in place of a peak He inspected it carefully, waiting for the pitch to cool, then gently pressed the portfire. It was firmly seated.
Motioning to the man to take the pitch back to the lamp and keep it hot, and telling another to hold the completed barrel, he then set to work repeating the whole operation with the second one. He had just finished when Southwick came bustling up.
‘Well, Edwards, have y’ got those boxes of fireworks ready yet? The cartridges are stowed in the boat the way you said, and the boat cover’s rigged and ready to be secured. We haven’t much time left y’know. Look!’
Edwards glanced up and was startled to see how near was the frigate. He ordered the barrels to be carried aft. ‘Handle ’em gently,’ he warned the men. ‘If you knock those portfires I’ll personally dry your corpses in the sun and sell the meat to the Dons as prime jerked beef.’
The tone of his voice warned them he was only just joking, and as soon as they were by the taffrail, holding the barrels as though they were glass, Ramage walked over and carefully inspected each one.
‘You’ve done a good job, Edwards. Let’s hope the portfires burn true. You’ll see the boat cover’s rigged so that once you’ve lit the portfires and got from under it, that line has only to be drawn taut and belayed and the cover’s snugged well down. Don’t rush things when I give the word, but remember that even if the portfires burn the full fifteen minutes, we can’t afford to lose a moment from the time you light them.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Edwards and climbed up on to the taffrail and out to the boat slung in the davits. ‘You,’ he said to a seaman, ‘come and give me a hand in here.’
The two men almost disappeared under the canvas cover and then took the first barrel as it was handed to them. Edwards lifted out some of the stacked cartridges to make two separate gaps for the barrels to be wedged in. As soon as he had fitted them he put a square of canvas over each one, the portfire sticking up through a slit in the centre. The canvas was thick enough to protect the flannel of the cartridge bags from the sparks thrown out by the sputterings of the portfires. He told the seaman to get back on board and crawled to the opening in the boat cover.
‘Ready now, sir.’
‘Very well, but you might as well stay there for a few minutes,’ Ramage said, and turned to look once again at the frigate.
Although the curvature of the earth just hid the waterline – indicating she was still more than four miles away – her roll was so violent he frequently glimpsed the copper sheathing on her bottom. His telescope clearly showed the discoloured reddish-yellow of the metal and Ramage noted there was no green streak of weed or patches of barnacles.
That told him a great deal – the frigate had been docked in the last month or two and, more important, since Spain came into the war only a few weeks ago, was almost certainly newly-commissioned with a raw crew and probably unseasoned officers and captain as well, if ships were being rushed into commission. And even trained guns’ crews would be hard put to hit anything from a ship rolling like that – anyone peering along the barrel of a gun would sight the sea a hundred yards away one moment and the blue sky the next, the horizon flashing past in a split second. For a few moments he pictured the Kathleen with the explosive ‘red herring’ towing astern at the end of the floating grass rope. For the demonstration, time was not so important. But if his bluff was called and he had to try to sink her, the boat must be in position under the Spaniard’s stern just as the portfires exploded the powder; a minute too soon and the Spaniards would have time to drop round shot through its bottom. A minute too late might not be so disastrous: much of the explosive effect would be lost, but it’d probably be enough to start some planks. How about musket fire? Well, it’d take a lot to sink the boat or make it leak enough to spoil all the powder. What were the snags then? It was late in the day to start thinking of them, but why hadn’t anyone used an explosion boat before? After all, fireships had been used against the Armada…Would powder exploding in an unconfined space do much damage? Well if he didn’t know, presumably the Spanish didn’t either; but since the first boat was bound to make a splendid firework display the Spaniards, as the potential victims of a second one, would be more nervous than he was. And in his experience the bigger the bang the more frightening the weapons, irrespective of the damage – which was why he’d been training the Kathleens to avoid shouting unnecessarily when working the guns, but scream like madmen if they ever had to board an enemy ship or repel boarders.
But whatever the effect of the explosion boat, Ramage thought inconsequentially, one thing was certain: afterwards the gunner’s mate would need a certificate signed by him to send to the Board of Ordnance explaining why so much powder had been used up in such a short time… And he visualized the letter he’d probably receive later from the Admiralty expressing Their Lordships’ ‘displeasure’, the result of a peevish protest from the Ordnance Board. Bureaucrats thrived on war – to them the smoke of battle transmuted itself into hundreds of orderly piles of forms and certificates, affidavits and letters, neatly tied with the familiar pink tape, and men killed in battle were swiftly disposed of by two strokes of a pen – simply a two-letter entry against each name, ‘DD’, the official abbreviation for ‘Discharged Dead’.
Realizing he was rubbing his forehead again, Ramage turned away. ‘Mr Southwick, make sure the jolly boat is ready to be hoisted out, and have a white cloth lashed to a boarding pike as a flag of truce. And I’ll have all the guns loaded, if you please.’
In a couple of minutes the little Kathleen would be ready for bluff and for battle. Divisions, Gianna’s shooting match, the men dancing to John Smith’s fiddle – all seemed to have happened days ago. Even now splashes of spray had mottled the polished brasswork with patches of dried salt. And, he reflected ironically, the decks are thick with wet sand where, only three or four hours ago, Southwick methodically searched for even one dry grain.
Another three minutes and he’d head directly for the frigate, which was now fine on the starboard bow. He looked significantly at Gianna and then turned to Antonio. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d both go down below in a few minutes.’
The Italian nodded and stretched out his hand. ‘Gianna told me to return your stake.’
Ramage took the ring, saw it was not his own and glanced at Gianna. Her right hand was instinctively clasping the middle finger of her left, where he guessed she was wearing his. She looked as if – with a sudden shock Ramage saw that Antonio had the same expression – as if they were saying a silent farewell to a condemned man. Turning away, slipping her signet ring on to the little finger of his left hand, he felt cold, as if the warmth had suddenly gone from the sun. The frigate was black and big; she seemed to roll much less now and her ports were open and the guns run out.
The Spanish frigate was La Sabina. She was lying almost stern-to fine on Kathleen’s larboard bow, and her name in bold letters right across her transom was picked out with too much gilding and red paint. Ramage looked impatiently at his watch, the vane at the masthead to see if the wind was constant, and then at the boat towing fifty yards astern. Thin wisps of smoke from the burning portfires were seeping out from under the canvas cover.
With the telescope he could clearly see the stubby black gun barrels poking out of the ports on La Sabina’s starboard side. Presumably they were trained as far aft as possible, and as soon as he got nearer they’d make good leading marks – by keeping this side of the line of the barrels he’d be outside their arc of fire.
As the men reeled in the log Southwick reported the Kathleen was making just over five knots. The easterly wind was right aft, and with the ship on the larboard tack the great boom of the mainsail was swung right over, blanketing both jib and foresail which, with no wind to keep them full, slatted with the cutter’s roll. Ramage glanced at his watch again. If the portfires burned evenly, he had eight minutes to go – barely enough.
Inexorably the seconds sped by. The black paint of the frigate’s hull was shiny and the over-elaborate ornamentation on her transom stood out boldly. Many pounds’ worth of gold leaf on the quarter galleries alone showed the captain to be a rich man, since he’d have paid for it with his own money.
How far now? Without the telescope he could just make out men on her decks, so she was less than half a mile ahead – about six minutes at the Kathleen’s present speed. The hands of his watch showed the portfires should fire the powder in five minutes. He was running it close; much too close.
Glancing round the cutter, he was surprised how cool and detached he felt. Or was it resignation? His father had often said, ‘If you can’t do anything about it, don’t fret about it!’ A dozen seamen were aft, waiting to pay out the rest of the grass warp: waiting to lengthen the monkey’s tail at the last moment to give it a longer reach as the cutter turned. Southwick gave him an inquiring look, anxious to put more distance between the Kathleen and the bags of powder in the smoking jolly boat, but Ramage shook his head.
The two men at the helm were having a hard time. The pressure on the big mainsail was not being balanced by pressure on the flapping headsails forward so the cutter was trying to come up into the wind, with the result that she was edging herself up to larboard. Ramage snapped an order to the quartermaster and in a few moments the frigate was once again fine on the larboard bow. She was growing noticeably larger and he could distinguish individuals among a group of men standing at the taffrail (just over seven hundred yards away, he noted). Some were much taller than the others. No – a quick glance through the telescope showed the smaller ones were leaning on the taffrail holding muskets to their shoulders. Sharpshooters, with orders to pick off the officers and men at the helm…