Ramage sat at his desk listening to the two men report. The lantern swinging from its hook in the deckhead threw dancing shadows which emphasized their features: Rossi with his round face, full and generous lips, straight black hair and large, expressive eyes could only be an Italian: his hands gestured as eloquently as he spoke and seemed part of the words. Orsini's face was narrower, the shadows exaggerating his high cheekbones. In this light, Ramage thought, he looked like a youth painted by one of the better Renaissance artists. For the moment, Orsini was content to let Rossi tell the story in his Genovese accent.
"We landed on the rocks below Forte della Stella without trouble, and then climbed the cliff. The goats, they must have a hard life. We frightened a mother and her youngsters - or, rather," he admitted with a grin, "they frightened us because they suddenly bolted from a ledge just above and showered us with stones."
"The hostages," Ramage said impatiently. "Tell me the details later."
"Oh, they are in there, in Forte della Stella. We were in position by sunset, and soon after we saw the French guards shut the doors, two big wooden doors studded with boltheads to blunt axe blades. There is also a small door, big enough for one man, fitted into one of the big doors."
"A wicket gate." Ramage said in English.
"Yes, a wicked gate. That was opened just before it was dark, and a sentry came and stood outside. Musket, no sword. He stands to one side - the left as you face the gate - and leans against it. He's probably learned how to sleep standing up."
"Learned it from a sailor, I expect," Ramage said drily.
"Yes," Rossi grinned. "And we saw one sentry walking round the battlements."
Although he had already made up his own mind, Ramage asked Orsini: "Do you also think the hostages are there?"
Orsini nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Why?" Ramage asked bluntly.
"Well, there are no guns on the battlements, sir - we were careful to check all round the fortress. Why keep a garrison at Forte della Stella unless to handle cannon to cover the entrance to Port' Ercole? To prevent enemy ships approaching?"
No guns? Now Ramage was certain. He was already half convinced when Rossi told him of one sentry at the main gate and another up on the battlements: that was unusual enough at a French fortress in such an isolated place and would be justified only if they were artillerymen guarding against enemy ships trying to sneak past to attack Port' Ercole. But with no guns perched up on the battlements, then there had to be another reason for the garrison and for the sentries.
There must be something special to guard inside the fortress, and that would not be Bonaparte's favourite canteen of cutlery. What could it be, apart from hostages?
Ramage could think of nothing else that would not be kept more safely in a castle or fortress scores of miles inland, not on the edge of the sea. Except that the Orsini Palace was just that, a comfortable palace but hard to defend, while Forte della Stella was simply a fortress and (like Castello on Giglio) relatively impregnable.
He looked at his watch. Eleven o'clock. A garrison of how many men? What duty was each sentry doing - four hours on and eight off? Or two on and four off? Anyway, two sentries on duty represented six men, not allowing for sickness. And guards for the prisoners. Say at least a dozen men, with a corporal, a sergeant, a cook, a lieutenant and a captain. Probably a groom or two for the horses. Nineteen - so say a minimum of twenty officers and men. After all, they were guarding hostages, not defending the fortress.
How many hostages? And where were they kept? Did they have a guard with them all the time - guards who, at the first sign of a rescue attempt, would treat them immediately as hostages, threatening to kill them unless the would-be rescuers withdrew?
"There was this contadino," Orsini said casually. "He helped."
"What contadino, and helped what?" Ramage demanded impatiently.
"Well, sir, as we left we saw a man making his way along a track about two hundred yards inland from the fortress. He was not worrying about being seen from the fortress - although in fact he was hidden most of the time by sage and thyme and juniper bushes. We wouldn't have seen him except that we were keeping a sharp lookout."
"Come on!" Ramage said, still holding his watch.
Rossi said: "I walked along the track so that I met him face to face. He was surprised to see me, of course, but as I was obviously an Italian he was not particularly alarmed.
"He had just come from Port' Ercole and was on his way to Sbarcatella - that's the small cape at the southern end of this bay and south-west of Isolotto."
Clearly Rossi was going to tell the story at his own speed, and Ramage realized that anyway it was difficult for some men to grasp the most important point in an incident: to them they had to begin at the beginning and carry on to the end.
"Well," Rossi continued, "this man has a small boat down there and some lobster pots, and he was going to row out and lift the pots."
"To whom does he sell the lobsters?"
"I was just coming to that, sir," Rossi said. "He used to sell them to the garrison at the fort, but it seems that after the first month they halved the price they would pay, so now he sells them in the village. He was very angry with the French. This only happened three weeks ago."
"So he started selling lobsters to the garrison seven weeks ago?"
"I was just coming to that," Rossi said again, finally adding, "sir", but carefully timing the gap. "According to this man the fort was standing empty until eight weeks ago. He remembers the date because it was a particular feast day and the French soldiers marching through the port interrupted a procession, which made the local people angry.
"Anyway, they went through the port and up the track leading from La Rocca, above the port, and on to the fort."
"Just soldiers?" Ramage interrupted.
"Just soldiers. About thirty of them, marching in four columns," Rossi said, hard put to keep the pride from his voice that the contadino could remember that. "Two officers, who were riding mules."
"No hostages, then?"
Rossi shook his head and then, in a typical Italian gesture, tapped the side of his nose knowingly with a forefinger. "Not then. They arrived a week later, with a special escort, and were taken to the fort. The special escort left again next day."
"So there's absolutely no doubt that the hostages are in the fort?"
"No sir," Rossi said blandly.
"Accidente!" Ramage exclaimed. "Why did you hold on to the information about this contadino for so long?"
Orsini took over the narrative, his manner defensive. "Well, sir, we didn't think you would believe us if we just said 'The hostages are there!' I thought you would need all the facts that led us to the conclusion."
Ramage sighed. These two mules were going to proceed at their own speed. "Go on, then. How many hostages?"
"The man didn't know because he did not see them: he was out fishing that day and his wife told him. Some women, some men. 'Many', the man said. But he could describe the inside of the fort."
"Wait a moment," Ramage said. "Why was this man so helpful? What stops him going to the garrison and reporting that there are two Italian strangers asking questions?"
Rossi gave a short and bitter laugh. "First, sir, he saw only me: Mr Orsini was hidden. Second, this man hates all Frenchmen. Apart from cheating him over the lobsters, two French soldiers tried to rape one of his daughters . . ."
"What happened about that?"
"Two of her brothers arrived, killed the Frenchmen and hid the bodies. The French commandant made the port pay a heavy fine because two of their men were missing. The Italians told the French captain the men had probably deserted."
"So now everyone in the port is angry with the French?"
"Yes, sir!" Rossi exclaimed, "but this happened four years ago, with soldiers stationed at the fort on the other side of Port' Ercole."
"Go on," Ramage said, "what did you find out about the inside of Forte della Stella, then?"
Orsini leaned forward and gave Ramage a folded piece of paper. "When I came back on board I drew this plan, based on what the man said. It's only a rough sketch. The guardhouse is here on the right, just inside the main gate. Then officers, two of them, have their quarters here. The soldiers and NCOs are here."
"And the hostages?"
"Here, sir," Orsini said, pointing to the north-west corner. "There is a corridor and leading off it are two very large rooms - almost like cellars. The men are kept in one, the women in the other. No privacy. When he delivered lobsters, the man saw a sentry on each door - he came usually in the late evening."
"How long did it take you to get up to the fort from the moment you landed from the boat at the foot of the cliff?" Ramage asked Orsini.
"Less than half an hour, sir. That includes ten minutes of crawling like snakes through the sage bushes to get close to the main gate - it was still daylight then. We had trouble with the macchia: it's thick and waist-high up to about thirty yards from the main gate but it's so dry that branches crackle every time you move: it's impossible not to snap them."
"And attacking the fort?"
Orsini thought for several seconds, and then glanced at Rossi, who remained staring down at the desk, obviously not wanting to commit himself. "It would be hard, sir. The only way in is through the main gate - or the little wicket door. There's smooth, open ground in front of the sentry, thirty yards or more, with gravel spread all over it (the French must use it as a parade ground) and the gravel makes a crunching noise if you tread on it."
"Coming back down the cliff to the boat," Ramage said, "could women get down that way?"
While Rossi shrugged his shoulders, with the comment: "It's the only way, sir, and it depends how old they are!", Orsini nodded. "Yes, sir. There's only one really bad place, and that's a climb of about fourteen feet, almost vertical. But we could secure a rope ladder from a rock just above it, so they could use that. We could rig knotted ropes along the rest of the route, above and below the ladder, which would give them something to hold on to, and guide them as well. A seaman here and there to help them - yes, it could be done. If there is a very old lady," he added as an afterthought, "a strong seaman could bring her all the way on his back."
Ramage looked at his watch. Macchia that went snap in the night. A sentry on the battlements. A sentry at the door whose defence was thirty yards of crackling gravel. He thought of General Cargill's standard tactic, a direct frontal attack. "Thank you," he told the two Italians. "Pass the word for Mr Aitken as you go out."
The Calypso's first lieutenant had obviously been waiting on deck, and once he was sitting in the armchair Ramage gave him the gist of the two Italians' report.
"Doesn't seem too hopeful, sir," Aitken said. "Do we try the Giglio trick tomorrow, march up and bluff 'em?"
Ramage shook his head. "I'd like to, but it's too great a risk. We'd have to go through Port' Ercole and anyway someone might have come over from Giglio in the meantime and casually mentioned something. I might have risked it," he admitted, "if all the hostages were men, but I can't (at least, I won't) risk women's lives. Not with these stakes."
"But nothing is at stake, sir!" Aitken protested.
"Exactly. If we sail off and leave them, they're kept prisoners until the end of the war and they're left alive and safe. My orders are to rescue hostages named in my orders from the Admiralty, and I've done that: they're all safely on board."
Aitken looked stubborn. He stood up and began pacing the cabin, his head bent to one side to avoid hitting the beams. The dim light of the lantern showed the muscles taut along his jawline. Ramage could never remember his first lieutenant pacing the cabin before. Obviously strong emotions were at work in the Scotsman.
Finally Ramage exclaimed, "For God's sake, sit down and spit it out! All the pacing back and forth makes me dizzy!"
Aitken sat down, took a deep breath and turned to look directly at Ramage. "These women, sir. 1 don't fully agree with you, if you'll permit me to say so."
"Since when have you had to ask permission to give an honest opinion?"
"It's not just that," Aitken said mournfully. "I'm not just expressing an opinion; I'm completely disagreeing with you, sir."
"Tell me about it, then. With what do you disagree?" Ramage was exasperated: he seemed to be spending the evening hauling information out of men like corks from bottles.
"You said the women are 'safe' while they are still prisoners. I canna agree. They're hostages. This fellow Bonaparte is holding them as bargaining counters. When the Admiralty gave you orders to rescue the other hostages (the ones named, and whom we found at Giglio), you can't be sure that when the Admiralty drew up those orders they knew anything about the second group - the ones now in the fort. In fact, I'm sure they didn't."
"What do you suggest, then?" Ramage asked coldly. "Shall we hurry back to London and ask Their Lordships if we should include these others? Or would you prefer that I go ahead and risk their lives?"
"There's no need to go to London, sir. You've several of the husbands on board, including Sir Henry. Why not ask them what they think?"
"Call a council of war, eh?" Ramage asked sarcastically.
"No, sir," Aitken answered calmly, knowing how his captain despised councils of war. "But husbands understand their wives," he continued. "Sir Henry knows what his wife would want us to do. Maybe just as important, Sir Henry knows what he would prefer. You can ask them individually: visit each one in his cabin. There's no question of a council of war and no question of evading responsibility. I'm a bachelor, I admit; but if I was a married man in this position, safe on board a frigate with my wife up in yon fortress, I know I'd like to have a say in what's to be done. After you know what the husbands have said, you can make your decision. The responsibility will be yours, and yours alone."
The more Ramage thought about it, the more reasonable Aitken's argument became. "Very well, I'll do that, and thanks for speaking up: I'm grateful - though I'm rather puzzled why you hesitated."
Both men sat alone with their thoughts for two or three minutes, until Ramage said quietly: "But even if all the husbands are in favour of us trying a rescue, how the devil can we tackle Forte della Stella? It's designed to hold off an army . . ."
"We're just reaching the place where we need the rope ladder," Orsini said. "You can see that sharp rock up there, sir: just made to secure it."
"Wait a moment," Ramage gasped, "let me get my breath back: I'm neither a topman nor a goat, and this climbing in the dark is hard work."
Below and slightly to the north of them, the rocky islet of Isolotto sat in the sea as though rolled down from the top of Monte Argentario and bounced out far enough from the coast to leave a wide channel. It was steep-sided with deep water round it, and the Calypso, anchored to leeward seemed - well, Ramage could only think she must look as though she belonged there.
Port' Ercole, over on her starboard quarter, was too small to provide a good anchorage for a frigate unless towed in with boats and it was too shallow alongside the jetty. So what was more obvious than a French national ship anchoring in the lee of Isolotto, only a brisk row or a short sail for one of her boats should the captain need to visit the port?
"Blast these mosquitoes," Ramage muttered, "they seem to be hiding in every bush I grab for a handhold."
"At least we frightened the goats off," Paolo said, recalling how he had sat in the captain's cabin while he and Rossi reported, and although his wrists, ankles, neck and face seemed one itching mass, he had managed not to scratch himself.
Orsini led the way upwards just as Stafford arrived on the small ledge with a party of cursing seamen, two of whom manhandled the rolled-up rope ladder while others with the coil of knotted rope were hitching it round rocks and bushes to provide handholds.
The moon was rising quickly now with the thinning cloud breaking up into patches to reveal many of the stars and planets. More important, Ramage realized, the moon was throwing enough shadow to show the seamen and Marines now coming up the cliff face where to put their feet. On a night like this, with a land breeze blowing from the edge of the cliffs across to the fort, a musket dropped a few feet on to a rock might well make a clatter loud enough to reach the ears of the French sentry on the battlements.
Those wooden buckets: he wished now he had risked using the leather ones because a wooden bucket if accidentally dropped (or grasped tightly by a man as he slipped and fell) would make almost as much noise as a dropped musket.
And the devil take climbing a cliff face with a brace of pistols jammed into the top of your breeches and a sword wrapped in canvas slung down your back, even if some marline prevented it swinging against the rocks. Nor did burnt cork smeared on the face and hands to blacken them add to the general feeling of comfort.
Ramage stopped feeling sorry for himself as he concentrated on the vertical climb that Orsini had earlier dismissed as "fairly easy" and then pictured Southwick at the end of the tail of seamen and Marines, jollying along the men and making sure they moved silently.
As he reached the top of the vertical cliff face and found Jackson only just behind him, Ramage sat down on a rock and watched the American unwind a light line coiled round his chest and shoulders, and drop one end over the edge. There was a call from below and then, two minutes later, another, and Jackson started hauling on the line. It was obviously heavier than he had expected and both Ramage and Orsini helped him. Finally the top step of the rope ladder appeared; then the second and third.
"Charge them a shilling a time," Ramage said as he left Jackson securing the heavier ropes of the ladder round the rock Orsini had pointed out. Ramage wiped the perspiration from his brow before it ran into his eyes. It was a damnably hot night, apart from all this climbing, and there was little enough breeze.
But was it dying? The thought suddenly alarmed him more than anything in the last forty-eight hours. He muttered to Orsini and both wetted a finger and held it up.
The breeze was steady, which was a good sign because a fitful breeze, coming in puffs, was usually a warning that it would die within half an hour. If only it was blowing at double the strength! Yet perhaps a gentle breeze would serve his purpose better: doubling the strength might halve the time available.
"Seems steady enough, sir," Orsini agreed, and led on when Ramage grunted. Orsini now knew how much depended on that breeze. Originally Captain Ramage had simply asked him whether he thought it possible to attack the fort, and he had answered that he thought it was. That was all, really: there was no mention of the size of the attacking force.
Orsini admitted to himself that the thought of attacking Forte della Stella (even using every man on board the Calypso) was frightening: only two hundred men to storm a fortress built to withstand an army. Then later he had discovered that Mr Ramage was going to use only two parties of men, ten in one, twenty in the other.
For a time (and Orsini freely admitted it) he was in such a panic that he debated whether or not to go to Mr Ramage and confess he had been stupidly over-optimistic in his report. Then, Mamma mia, he had heard Mr Ramage's plan and was thankful he had done nothing. Audacious! That was a splendid English word, so near the Latin and Italian, but just different enough to convey that extra something that Mr Ramage so often provided from out of nowhere, it seemed.
Every piece of audacity was so well tailored, whether attacking Port' Ercole with the bomb ketches a couple of years ago (more, actually), or dealing with the pirates at Trinidada (where Mr Ramage had met his future wife), or escaping from France when war broke out again and while he was on his honeymoon. Orsini stopped his memory working: Lady Sarah had vanished while Mr Ramage was crossing the Atlantic to Devil's Island. Yet Lady Sarah was, Orsini knew, just the sort of woman he would himself like to have as a wife. Now she was missing, probably drowned.
"So at last we reach the top, eh?" Ramage commented. "Thank goodness it will be downhill going back!"
"Do you think the ladies will be able to climb down?"
"You're looking a long way ahead," Ramage said banteringly, "but if we manage to get 'em this far, I think they'll get down all right."
Ramage looked across at the fort. As its name indicated, it was star-shaped and with the moon lighting some parts and casting deep shadow over the rest he was reminded of a starfish tossed up on a sandy beach: apparently it had no eyes, no mouth, and no way of moving yet, put back in the sea, it walked, ate, and seemed to know where it was going. Momentarily, Ramage had the uncomfortable thought that perhaps hidden eyes were watching from the fort; that there was more life there than he gave credit.
He sat down amid the coarse grass on the cliff top and waited for the men to get up the rockface. His watch showed it was just an hour past midnight. Plenty of time before dawn. In fact, a chilling thought, some of his own men and those of the French garrison might be living the rest of their lives between now and dawn. Not the hostages, though, he told himself. He remembered the arguments he had had with the husbands.
Sir Henry was hard put not to overrule Ramage and insist on coming, and so were the two other admirals, until Ramage had been forced to tell them brutally that they were out of condition, would be hopeless shooting with muskets and probably with pistols as well, were completely untrained for this kind of fighting (in which the Calypsos excelled) and - this had been the final argument - for every one of the admirals he took he would have to leave a trained Calypso behind.
The repulsive Cargill, not consulted since he was a bachelor, had started off by insisting that he should be in command, proclaiming that this was an attack for which soldiers were trained, and so on. Again Ramage had been brutal. No, he corrected himself, his contempt for Cargill had made him almost vicious, and when Cargill had tried to assert his authority in front of all the other hostages, Ramage had asked him where he had seen active service. When the general evaded the question, Ramage had dismissed the whole question with a curt: "It is no secret, sir, that you had neither seen a shot fired in anger nor heard one until the Calypso fired at that French frigate."
Yes, it was nasty, it was probably unfair, and it was many other things, but it was necessary and, Sir Henry had said to him privately afterwards, Cargill had asked for it. Had he kept his mouth shut, everything would have gone off smoothly, but once again Cargill had wanted to play soldiers, and this time the result could be not only disastrous for the Calypsos, but lethal for the hostages up in the fort.
Aitken scrambled over the edge of the cliff and joined his captain. Ramage was secretly pleased to note that the first lieutenant was also panting.
"That rope ladder was a good idea of Orsini's sir," he gasped. "It'd be a devil of a climb without it." He paused. "But you came up without it, sir."
"Yes," Ramage said, adding teasingly, "a question of seniority."
"Aye, there's many advantages in being a poor lieutenant if that cliff face is the price o' being on the Post List!"
Several seamen followed and squatted down in the grass behind the officers. Then Hill came up, leading several men who very carefully lifted wooden buckets over the edge and equally carefully set them down again. Rennick was next, followed by Sergeant Ferris and five Marines. Rennick had wanted to bring all the Marines, but Ramage had pointed out that Kenton, left in command of the ship, needed a force in case the French arrived from Port' Ercole.
Finally Southwick, puffing and blowing but very cheerful, arrived and announced: "There! If I can haul myself up this cliff, then a convoy of rheumaticky grandmothers can let themselves down! The boats have returned to the ship, sir," he reported to Ramage.
"Very well. Now, Mr Aitken, fall in the two parties and then we can move on and finish tonight's business."
Ramage again tested the breeze while Aitken sorted out the seamen, and then he inspected the buckets. They were doing their job and the men responsible for them knew what they were expected to do. Ramage walked with Hill until they were out of earshot of the men.
"Hill, I don't want to make you nervous, but I must make sure you realize the success of the whole attack depends on your positioning. Almost more important, you and your men mustn't be seen by the sentry - or the people roused out when he raises the alarm. Until you hear shots - if youhear shots - you keep out of sight. If there's shooting and if you've finished your job, then you can join in."
"Yes, sir, I understand. Seems a long way from the great cabin of the Salvador del Mundo!"
"If it all goes wrong, we may yet find ourselves back there!" Ramage said grimly and recalled the strange court-martial, where a captain's insanity had put his life in danger and Hill, a bored young lieutenant on the port admiral's staff, had asked Ramage to be allowed to sail with him.
Aitken joined them. "The two parties are ready, sir." Then he asked Hill: "You're sure you have enough men? Ten, and five buckets?"
"They'll be enough," Hill said confidently and excused himself.
"He doesn't seem nervous," Aitken commented. "Bit o' luck getting him when Wagstaffe was promoted. Now, sir, about our party. I've put the seamen in the lead, with Rennick's Marines following. Rennick's not very pleased but I pointed out that he would insist on his men wearing those clod-hopping boots!"
"You're quite right," Ramage said. "The most important part of this is going to be done crawling on our bellies, and seamen with just pistols and cutlasses are less likely to make a noise. Rennick will get his chance if any real fighting starts. Right, we're ready so -" he took out his watch and turned it so the moon lit the face, "- as it's almost half past one we can move off. We'll give Hill's party a couple of minutes' start along the edge of the cliff, then Orsini and Rossi can lead us to the fort."
The track (now used only by goats and sheep and the lone contadino) dipped and climbed and twisted as it led to Forte della Stella which, as the patchy cloud drifted across the moon, alternately disappeared in the darkness and then reappeared, almost ghostly and unreal, its grey stone walls fleetingly silvered, but stark, remote and menacing. As the track took a final turn which brought them in sight of the main gate - the only gate, Ramage corrected himself - he decided that it was time for the final approach on hands and knees.
"This track curves round to the left on its way to Port' Ercole, and leaves the Fort on the right," Orsini explained quietly. "About two hundred yards farther ahead there's a fork to the right, a smaller track which goes off to the fort, but Rossi and I took a short-cut through the macchia, starting here. It's about one hundred and fifty yards to the gate."
Ramage again pulled out his watch, waited for a cloud to drift clear of the moon, and saw they had taken only ten minutes. Hill's men would not be in position yet, and the Calypso's third lieutenant knew he was not to start until at least half an hour after leaving Ramage's party. Twenty minutes to go ... More than enough time, Ramage decided.
Even after letting Rossi and Orsini get three or four yards ahead, so that the sage and juniper bushes they pushed aside did not spring back in his face, Ramage felt his cheeks and forehead smarting with many scratches from unexpected long twigs. The dam' pistols chafed the skin at his waist and seemed to have stove in his lower ribs. The cutlass lashed on his back thudded monotonously against his spine, despite the canvas covering and marline lashing, and every sage and thyme bush and juniper must be the home of a hundred hungry mosquitoes.
The smell of thyme and sage (and rosemary - "That's for remembrance") brought back memories of the desperate affair several years ago not far from here (in fact he could see the Torre di Buranaccio on the mainland from the cliff top) when he and Jackson had rescued Gianna. Another lifetime; now, crawling on his belly towards the fort, it was hard to believe he had ever been there, and that for years he had thought he loved Gianna, and cursed the differing nationalities and religions that prevented them marrying.
Then, some years later, he had met Sarah and married her. Now Sarah was probably drowned, and Gianna murdered by Bonaparte's men, and here was Captain Ramage back again, a few miles from where the first part of the story began. Only now he was alone. Alone, probably a widower though his thirtieth birthday was distant, and crawling on his belly, with Jackson once again close behind him.
One day this thrice-blasted war would end, and he would go on half-pay and return to St Kew to live on the family estate. Cornwall attracted him and there would be a job for Jackson, who did not want to return to America, and the widower and bachelor would gently slide into old age, nodding knowingly about a newly born foal, cursing a late frost which caught blossom on the apple trees, and making sure the men doing muckspreading had plenty to drink. Rheumatism would set in and he and Jackson would creak and reminisce over old times. About rescuing Gianna, capturing the Calypso, raiding Curaçao, sailing into Trinidada off the Brazilian coast (no, they'd both keep off that because it would remind them of Sarah), and they'd reminisce too about this affair.
Already his knees felt almost raw: there was as much rock here as hardened earth - indeed, it was the sort of ground on which sage and juniper thrived. Yes, in the quiet of St Kew they would sit and reminisce of an autumn evening - as long as they survived the next hour. And the nearer they crawled to the fort, which seemed to double in size every twenty yards, the remoter seemed the chance of this gamble succeeding.
It was a gamble, and Ramage recalled how pompously he had told Sir Henry a day or so ago that he was contemptuous of gamblers because the element of chance could usually be removed by careful planning. Sir Henry had nodded politely, although most likely he wanted to laugh aloud. Anyway, his stake was down; the dice were rolling. And now Orsini was whispering urgently that they were about thirty yards from the end of the macchia and the beginning of the gravel square in front of the fort. Ramage turned and passed the order back for the column to halt.
Giving enough time for the word to pass from man to man in a whisper, Ramage then told Aitken, who had been following him, that everyone should unwrap his cutlass (but keep it down low so that the moon did not glint on the blade) load pistols and put them on half-cock.
Ramage did not pass orders for the Marines: Rennick knew exactly what he was doing. Ramage pictured Southwick unwinding the long strip of canvas from his great two-handed sword, which could take off a man's head with a couple of blows. One blow, probably, if rage put extra strength in Southwick's arms.
"Report back when everyone's ready," he told Aitken, who started the order off on its whispered journey. By the time the answer came back Ramage had both his pistols at half-cock and tucked back into his waist belt, and the canvas off his cutlass, which was now waiting on the ground beside him.
"I can see your face very clearly," he told Aitken. "That cork blacking has worn off."
"Afraid you're the same, sir," Aitken muttered. "The perspiration has washed it away. And I didn't bring any spare burnt corks."
"Oh well, I don't expect we'll meet anyone we know," Ramage said lightly. He picked up his cutlass. "Very well, we'll go on until we reach the gravel, and then wait for Hill."
Five minutes later Ramage peered at the gates from the edge of the bushes as Orsini pointed and whispered. "There, you can make out the sentry standing just to the left of that black oblong, which is the small doorway. The door must be open. We called the others doors, but they're really gates, and what was the proper English word for the small door? I'm afraid I have forgotten already."
"A wicket gate. A Dutch word we've adopted, I think, although the Welsh refer to a 'wicked' gate."
"Like Rossi. The Welsh obviously mean a gate just like that," Paolo said. "It's a wicked long run to reach it!"
"If you're going to make such poor jokes," Ramage muttered, "we'll speak Italian!"
He rolled on his side and pulled out his watch. Five minutes to go. Or, rather, five minutes until the time from which Hill could start.
Paolo nudged him. "Look, sir. Up on the battlements to the right: there's the other sentry."
Ramage watched the soldier march - no, he was strolling - and saw that he was making a complete circuit of the fort. He was not keeping a lookout on the seaward side - in fact, from the way he progressed it seemed highly unlikely that he was keeping a lookout for anything in particular. Would Hill have seen him? And would he be planning to start the attack once the sentry was out of sight from him on the landward side of the battlements? From down here among the roots of the sage and juniper, it was hard to judge the breeze, but it was light enough for Ramage to hear the faint rustle of the leaves. Yes, the breeze was still there, and the clouds showed that at least high up it had not changed direction.
He turned to Aitken. "Crawl alongside me and have a good look round." He passed on Orsini's observations, and Aitken nodded. "Let's hope Hill has seen that sentry," he murmured, echoing Ramage's thoughts. "If he times it right, it could give us an extra couple of minutes. . ."