Ramage's Signal (r-1) by Dudley Pope

Author:Dudley Pope [Pope, Dudley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adv_history, adv_maritime

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Admittedly it was a bet for which he would be hard put to find a taker, whether among the bookies on Newmarket Heath or the pallid gamblers at White's or Brooks's or Boodle's. He was betting the life of the fifteen motley crew of the Passe Partout on a single chance: that the couple of hundred or so Algerines who had captured the Magpie only a few weeks ago were still bewildered; that the towering masts and running and standing rigging of a gaff-rigged topsail schooner was such a complex mass of spars and rope, to men used to simple lateen sails hoisted on stubby masts, that they were certainly unused to it and probably still nervous.

He stood close to Rossi and gave his instructions. The tip of the Magpie's flying jibboom was less than forty yards astern; the musket balls were beginning to rattle and Jackson, having been warned by Ramage, was waiting the signal to fire his swivels into the screaming and gibbering mass of Arabs on the Magpie's bow while Orsini held back his Frenchmen.

'This ship', Ramage said to Chesneau in a conversational tone, 'she handles easily?'

'Like a dancer', the fat man said. He was pale now and perspiring but Ramage sensed it was due to more of a feeling of helplessness than fear.

Thirty yards to the tip of the Magpie's jibboom, and it would be only a matter of moments before some of the Passe Partouts were hit by musket balls.

Ramage pointed at Jackson. 'Fire, when you're ready!'

He pointed at Orsini and repeated the order.

The guns thundered out at twenty yards: by the time the smoke cleared it was ten yards, the great jibboom high above them.

Then he turned to Rossi. 'Round we go!' and with that helped the Italian push the big tiller over to larboard so that the Passe Partout suddenly turned to starboard, jinking right across the Magpie's bow and missing the jibboom by only a yard or so. Chesneau, the moment he saw what they were doing, jumped over to add his weight to the leverage on the rudder and as Ramage tried to look over his shoulder at the Magpie, he saw the great schooner with its towering masts and topmasts already passing astern, at right-angles to the Passe Partout's course. As her quarterdeck raced by, the tartane's swivels were grunting again and spurting smoke, slamming 3-pounder roundshot across her decks while the unhurried firing of muskets showed that the Frenchmen were picking their targets.

The Passe Partout's sheets were eased as Martin hurried his men to trim the sail on the new course, with the wind now broad on the larboard quarter.

Ramage stood back from the tiller, saw the lateen sail bellying nicely, noticed that Jackson's swivel gunners were already sponging and ramming, and saw the Frenchmen hurriedly reloading their muskets as they scrambled into positions from which they could fire at the Magpie when she turned after them.

The schooner herself, Ramage then realized, had been taken completely by surprise:

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