Read Online Ramage & the Saracens by Dudley Pope - Free Book Online Page A

still catted.
    â€œSend half a dozen men to the starboard bower,” he snapped. “Tell them to look as though we’re preparing to anchor.”
    Southwick swore and Aitken looked crestfallen as he shouted the order. He put down the speaking-trumpet and admitted: “I didn’t think of that.”
    â€œNeither did I,” Ramage said. “I hope the French haven’t either.”
    The French frigate was now five hundred yards away on the starboard bow, with the short peninsula to larboard and the gap between them about six hundred yards wide: the French captain had anchored to give himself plenty of swinging room.
    Just enough room, Ramage noted ironically, for an enemy frigate to wear back and forth across her stern. And if she cut her cable the wind would blow her straight on to the rocks at the foot of the peninsula. Her captain could not be blamed for that because with this wind the whole coast was a lee shore, and with her yards struck down on deck she could not move, although if the weather turned bad they could get the yards up again and underway in a few hours.
    The wind was freshening: seaward there were the occasional whitecaps and the boulders at the foot of the cliffs were growing white collars of spray. Occasionally one of the topsails slatted, caught by an odd eddy of wind and enough to make the quartermaster glance aloft anxiously.
    Now the
Calypso
was heading for the gap between the frigate’s stern and the peninsula. Ramage guessed that the crews would be waiting for the guns to be run out. The second captain of every gun on the starboard side, after a quick glance through the port, was now preparing to cock the flintlock and then stand well back. The gun captains would be getting ready to take up the strain on their long lanyards, crouching behind the guns, left leg flung out to one side and sighting along the barrel, waiting for the target to appear.
    Should he then switch to round shot? He decided not; he wanted to kill men without damaging the ship: he had already decided that, so he would continue with grapeshot. It would be easy enough to change later on, when he could see the effect of the fall of shot.
    He gave a helm order to Aitken, who passed it on to the quartermaster, and then another, a half point this time. Then, a couple of minutes later a quarter point. Now the
Calypso
was lined up precisely to go through the gap, passing the French frigate’s stern about twenty yards off.
    Now for the waiting. One could wait an hour for a post-chaise to arrive at the next post inn; one could wait half an hour for one’s wife to finish primping her hair and generally getting ready to go to a reception; but the last minute or two before going into action were as much as a man could bear: not because of nervousness but simply because of the tension mounting before the first gun fired.
    She was
Le Tigre:
he could now read the name on her transom as she swung in the wind. Red lettering on yellow, a vivid slash of colour on an otherwise black hull. Guns not run out; fore and main-yards down on deck. Through the glass he could see a group of officers watching the
Calypso
from
Le Tigre
’s quarterdeck: no doubt waiting for the challenge to be answered and the
Calypso
to run up her numbers in the French Navy List.
    They seemed to be in no hurry; there were three officers and a couple of seamen on the quarterdeck, and Ramage could see the sun glinting on a couple of telescopes, but there seemed no sense of urgency in the Frenchmen’s stance; no indication that they regarded themselves as in any danger.
    They were fooled by the
Calypso
’s build and the fact that she was flying a Tricolour, a perfectly legitimate
ruse de guerre,
providing you lowered and hoisted your proper colours before opening fire.
    Now he could distinguish the salt dried along
Le Tigre
’s water-line; her quarter-boats were lowered and secured to the boat-boom amidships; there was a line of