The Carpenter's Mate was back. 'Five feet, sir, and the more she goes down the more shot holes there are being submerged.'
And, thought Ramage, the deeper the holes the more the pressure of water...
'Can't you plug them?'
'Most of 'em are too big, sir - all jagged. We could fother a sail over 'em if we got the way off the ship...'
"When did you last sound?'
'Not above quarter of an hour all told, sir.'
One foot of water in fifteen minutes. If it took about seven tons to put her down an inch, how many for a foot? Twelve inches times seven tons - eighty-four: that meant in fifteen minutes at most eighty-four tons had flooded in. How much more could she take before she sank or capsized? God knows - nothing about that in seamanship manuals. Nor would the Carpenter's Mate know. Nor the constructors, even if they were within hail. Right, let's have some action Lieutenant Ramage.
'Carpenter's Mate sound the well every five minutes and report to me each time. Get some more men to help plug shot holes - any within a couple of feet of the present water level: stuff in hammocks - anything to slow up the leaks.'
Ramage walked to the rail at the forward end of the quarterdeck from force of habit, since it was there he had spent much of his seagoing life while on watch.
Now, he thought: what do we know? The Barras can do what she likes: she's the cat, we are the mouse. We can't manoeuvre, but she's just come round to a slightly converging course. How many degrees? Perhaps twenty. When would the two ships meet?
More bloody sums, Ramage thought crossly. The Barras was 800 yards away when she altered course. So - take the 800 yards as the base of the triangle, the Barras's course as the hypotenuse, and the Sibella's course the opposite side. Question: the length of the opposite side ... He could not think of a formula and ended up guessing that the Barras - providing she did not alter her present course again - would finally converge and collide with the Sibella at a point a mile ahead. The frigate was making a little over three knots. Three into sixty minutes ... they'd meet in twenty minutes: by then it would be almost dark.
Again red flashes rippling along the Barras's side; again the thunder. The French are firing raggedly - or, more likely, each gun is being carefully aimed by an officer, since they have no opposition to fear. But none of the shots hit the hull: crashes and the noise of tearing canvas warned him the French were aiming at the masts and spars.
If he was the Barras's captain, what would he do? Well, make sure the Sibella is crippled - which is why he's now firing
at the rigging - then run alongside in the last few minutes before darkness, board - and tow the Sibella back to Toulon in triumph. And that, he thought, is just what he is going to do: her captain is timing it beautifully, and he knows that for the last few hundred yards before he gets alongside, we'll be so close he can call on us to surrender. He'll know we can't repel boarders...
Ramage realized his own position was almost ludicrous: he was in command of a ship which, ghost-like, was sailing herself without a man at the wheel - without a wheel for that matter; but it didn't matter a damn anyway, because within half an hour he'd have to surrender. Unable to fight, and with the ship full of wounded, he had no alternative.
And you, Lieutenant Nicholas Ramage, he told himself bitterly, since you're the son of the discredited tenth Earl of Blazey, Admiral of the White, can expect little mercy from the Admiralty if you surrender one of the King's ships, no matter the reason. The sins - alleged sins, rather - of the father shall be visited on the sons, yea even unto the something or other generation, according to the Bible.
But looking around the Sibella's deck, it's hard to believe in God: that severed trunk with the legs encased in bloody silk stockings and the feet still shod in shoes fitted with elegant silver buckles, is the frigate's former Captain, and next to it presumably the First Lieutenant, whose days of toadying are finished. Ironic that a man with an ingratiating smile permanently on his face should lose his head. What a shambles: a seaman, naked except for trousers, sprawled over the wreckage of a carronade slide as if in a loving embrace, his hair still bound up in a long queue, a strip of cloth round his forehead to stop perspiration running into his eyes - and his stomach ripped open. Beside him another man who seems unmarked until you realize his arm is cut off at the shoulder
'Orders, sir?'
It was the Bosun. Orders - he'd been daydreaming while all these men left alive in the Sibella waited, confident he would perform some miracle and save their lives: save them from ending their days rotting in a French prison. The devil take it: he felt shaky. Ramage made a great effort to think, and at that moment saw the foremast swaying. Presumably it had been swaying for some time, since the Bosun had already wondered why it had not gone by the board. Gone by the board...