Free Ramage And The Drum Beat by Dudley Pope

the boom rising slightly as the wind bellied the mainsail. Six knots now? No time for another cast of the log.
    Tiny puffs of smoke along the frigate’s taffrail, barely glimpsed before the wind dispersed them, and faint popping noises – musket fire – at that range a nuisance but no more.
    ‘Three minutes and thirty seconds,’ said Jackson.
    Ramage guessed the distance at six hundred yards and signalled to Southwick. At once the seamen began paying out the rest of the grass warp and the jolly boat dropped farther astern, the warp floating on the water like a long thin snake. Southwick swore as a bight of the rope twisted into a figure of eight, knowing a sudden jerk on the boat might shift the casks and snap the portfires, exploding the powder prematurely, but a seaman untwisted it before the weight on the boat came on.
    Many more puffs of smoke along the frigate’s taffrail
    ‘Three minutes,’ Jackson chanted gloomily.
    Two stern chase guns were poking out through the ports like accusing black fingers. If they hadn’t fired by now they never would – the Spaniards must have decided that with the rolling it was a waste of powder.
    ‘How much more to run?’
    ‘Nearly all gone,’ Southwick called. ‘Five fathoms or so left… There, that’s the lot. Steady lads, take the strain now. All hundred fathoms out, sir!’
    So the jolly boat, the explosive red herring, was towing astern on the end of a two-hundred-yard rope tail.
    ‘Two minutes and thirty seconds,’ said Jackson, excitement beginning to show in his voice.
    About four hundred yards, Ramage noted.
    ‘Mr Southwick! Overhaul the mainsheet. Stand by to bear up. Not a moment to lose when I give the word.’
    Yards mattered now as he sailed the Kathleen right down to the frigate’s starboard quarter, carefully staying just enough to windward so the wind would blow the jolly boat down to the frigate when, fifty yards away, he turned the Kathleen round to larboard to head back the way she came for a moment – giving the tail a flick, in fact – and hove-to. Then, stopped with her stern to the frigate and the grass warp floating in her wake in a huge crescent, if he’d judged it correctly the wind would slowly blow the boat down towards the frigate, and if the portfires burned true… If, if, if!
    ‘Two minutes, sir,’ said Jackson, his voice revealing tension for the first time.
    Spanish officers were standing among the men with muskets on the taffrail – he could distinguish their uniforms. Not even a stump of the mizzen left; it must have been a fantastic squall that hit her – or else, for all that new paint, her rigging was rotten.
    Yet again Ramage glanced astern at the boat. She was towing beautifully, bow riding high but the stern not squatting so much that water slopped up over the transom. No sign of even a whisp of smoke: he swore – had the portfires gone out? A quick glance with the telescope did not reassure him. More popping from ahead and a man at the second carronade on the Kathleen’s larboard side screamed with pain and another dropped silently to the deck. Ramage stared curiously, trying to recognize the sprawled figure.
    ‘One and a half minutes!’ Jackson said.
    Startled at the realization he had only ninety seconds left, Ramage looked again at the frigate. She had suddenly become enormous and even as he shouted to Southwick to put the helm down it seemed impossible for the Kathleen’s enormously long bowsprit to miss swiping the frigate’s starboard quarter as she swung round to larboard.
    With all that preparation, Ramage swore to himself, he’d let a wounded man divert his attention long enough to wreck the whole bloody manoeuvre. He rubbed the scar on his brow, fighting back the panic trying to get him in its grip.
    For a moment as the tiller went over there seemed total confusion on the Kathleen’s deck; one group of seamen sheeted in the mainsail at the run; others hardened in jib and foresail sheets and both sails