the gun in the right direction with the spring on the cable – at a fort, for instance. Then, with the barrel pointing on the bearing of the fort you have to hurl the shell over the walls and into the middle. You do that by increasing or decreasing the amount of powder used to launch the shell. Like a child’s peashooter, in fact. A boy points the peashooter in the general direction of his target and controls the parabola of the pea by blowing harder or softer.’
‘So the most important items on board a bomb ketch are a good telescope to spot the fall of the shell and a large scoop to measure the powder,’ Aitken said with a grin. ‘As we have a bring-’em-near and scoops to spare it seems a pity that we have to scuttle these two vessels, sir.’
‘It does,’ Ramage said thoughtfully, ‘but a bomb ketch’s drawback is that it’s not much use for anything else. These two go to windward like haystacks. They’d never keep us in sight for more than six hours, let alone stay in company, and we have a long way to go.’
Still, it shocked Aitken’s thrifty soul to scuttle or burn two well-built ships. There was no chance of treating them as prizes – with Malta in French hands the nearest prize court was in Gibraltar, a thousand miles away, and both vessels would be recaptured long before reaching it because the Mediterranean was now swarming with French and Spanish ships.
‘’Tis a pity we can’t use them to bombard somewhere,’ Aitken said almost fretfully. ‘Anyway, could we not have some practice, sir? I’ve never seen one o’ these shells burst. I think it’s knowledge I ought to have,’ he added hopefully. ‘And the men, too.’
‘It’s knowledge you ought to have already,’ Ramage said with mock severity, having served in a bomb ketch for a brief three months when a young midshipman, although she had never fired a shot.
‘I know, sir,’ Aitken said contritely. ‘I was hoping that…’
‘You’re like a child with a new toy,’ Ramage said amiably, going to the ship’s side and gesturing to Aitken to climb down into the waiting cutter so that they could return to the Calypso . One of the few advantages of being the senior officer was that you were the last to enter and the first to leave a boat, and as he had always been impatient, he welcomed promotion.
Back in his cabin and sprawled in the one comfortable chair, his sword and hat tossed on the settee, Ramage quietly and amiably cursed Aitken. The Scot was a fine seaman, extremely brave, with a whimsical sense of humour and an extraordinary devotion to Ramage which had recently led him to decline the command of a frigate (and thus promotion to the post list) so that he could stay as the first-lieutenant of the Calypso . But this product of Perth – of Dunkeld, anyway, which was just to the north, alongside the Tay – had unintentionally jabbed a finger on a tender spot.
Since he had ordered the Marine sentry to drag Renouf away after he had fainted, Ramage had been trying to make up his mind about the two bomb ketches. Having read the French orders, he now knew what they were supposed to be doing, and all the Frenchmen were on board the Calypso , guarded by Marines. Even the Brutus ’s commanding officer had eventually been sobered up with the help of several buckets of sea water hurled by a couple of gleeful British seamen.
The French plans could be wrecked by burning or scuttling the ketches, but for the moment young Paolo was temporarily in command of the Fructidor , striding up and down the tiny quarterdeck in his second-best uniform, dirk hanging at his waist, telescope tucked under his arm, and trying to keep his prize crew of half a dozen men busy coiling ropes and swabbing the decks. Aitken had forbidden him to start the men scrubbing and holystoning, though the planking was as stained as the floor of a bankrupt wine shop.
The Calypso ’s new fourth-lieutenant, William Martin, was temporarily prizemaster of the Brutus ,