'Oh yes', Orsini said, pausing a moment as he worked out Stafford's error, 'my aunt occasionally had to talk to the French ambassador, and in the world of diplomacy the language is French. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of hearing her make a mistake.'
'Cor, French eh?' exclaimed Stafford. 'It oughta be English. Lot of double meanings, that's all French is.'
'That's why governments use it', Jackson said. 'Now look sharp, 'cos here comes the bosun.'
CHAPTER TWO
He was very familiar with the thick-walled towers built two hundred years ago by the Spaniards along the Tuscan coast and many other places. They were signal towers and watch towers, some round, some square, each within sight of another, so that a fire of brushwood - usually from olive trees which burned readily and with intense flames - lit in a brazier on top would be seen in a moment; within twenty minutes a warning could be passed a hundred miles along a coast. They were admittedly just towers, with walls ten feet thick. These semaphore towers that the captain had been discussing with the first lieutenant and Southwick were something quite different.
What exactly was 'semaphore'? He knew the Greek derivation but had no idea what use the French were making of it. At that moment he heard his name being hailed from the quarterdeck rail and saw that the first lieutenant was down from aloft. Accidente, he had no hat, his shirt was grubby, his breeches stained by that oaf of a boy spilling the apology for stew
that had masqueraded as a meal. But it was the first lieutenant hailing, and he had only slightly more patience than the captain.
There were times, he thought crossly, as he made for the quarterdeck ladder, when he could not understand why his aunt had fallen in love with Captain Ramage. Then, to be fair, when he recalled seeing her in some of her regal rages in the palace at Volterra, he could not understand why Captain Ramage had fallen in love with her. Anyway, with her now a refugee from her kingdom of Volterra and living in England with the captain's parents, at least she had to be patient.
'Ah, Mr Orsini, how kind of you to come along.'
'Aye aye, sir.' It was best to humour the captain when he was in one of these sarcastic moods.
'Cast your eye, Mr Orsini, upon the slate which Mr Southwick is holding, and tell me what you think it represents.'
The first lieutenant, lieutenant of Marines, master and captain: four pairs of eyes were watching him as he tried to make sense out of the small squares and lines marked on the slate. It looked like a maze. A puzzle. A diagram - yes, but of what?
'Come now, Mr Orsini, time flies, and your hesitation hardly flatters the person who drew the diagram.'
That was the first lieutenant, who had been at the maintopmasthead. Ah! That was the clue.
'II semaforo, commandante!'
Ramage said: 'Be more exact.'
'That French camp, sir: the huts are here' - he indicated the five rectangles - 'and this line is the wall.'
'The wall? II muro? Do you know what un semaforo is?'
Sheepishly Paolo shook his head. 'No, sir, I was guessing.'
'Well, it's like patterns on playing cards: each has a separate meaning. With that kind' - he nodded towards the tower, now well past on the starboard quarter - 'there are a series of white shutters, like windows. You open some and close others so you make patterns, like rearranging the black-and-white squares on a chess board, and someone at a distance using a telescope can "read" it and understand your message. Of course, he has to have the same signal book as you, giving him the key to the meanings.'
'Yes, sir.' It was so obvious; he should have guessed. But where was the next tower? And the last one? How far could they see from one tower to another? Where did a message come from, and go to? And why was the Calypso not attacking this tower? Surely tearing down one tower would have the same effect as cutting a signal halyard?
Paolo realized that in the last few moments all the ship's officers had arrived on the quarterdeck, and it gave him some satisfaction that Kenton, the second lieutenant, and Martin, the third, were even more puzzled than he had been.
'Mr Southwick will take over as officer of the deck; the rest of you come down to my cabin. Bring the slate.'
As soon as he was sitting at his desk, with his officers perched on the settee and Aitken occupying the only armchair, Ramage said: 'You've been bored since we captured the bomb ketches, and have to stand an extra watch while Wagstaffe takes our frigate prize to Gibraltar. I'm sorry I couldn't keep the bomb ketches as toys for you, but you saw how slow they were, so there was no choice but to scuttle them.'
'That seemed to change our luck, sir', Aitken said ruefully.
'Yes. Here we are with orders to attack anything we can find, no British admiral within a thousand miles, and all we see are a few small coasting vessels carrying grain, almonds, rice, casks of wine, olive oil, salt fish and meat. Nothing worth sending in as a prize.'