Ramage's Signal Read Online Free

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 quarter-deck 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.
    â€œAh, Mr Orsini, how kind of you to come along.”
    â€œAye aye, sir.” It was best to humour the Captain when he was in one of these sarcastic moods.
    â€œCast 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?
    â€œCome 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 main-topmasthead. Ah! That was the clue.
    â€œIl semaforo, commandante!”
    Ramage said: “Be more exact.”
    â€œThat French camp, sir: the huts are here”—he indicated the five rectangles—”and this line is the wall.”
    â€œThe wall?
Il muro?
Do you know what
un semaforo
is?”
    Sheepishly Paolo shook his head. “No, sir, I was guessing.”
    â€œWell, 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.”
    â€œYes, 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.
    â€œMr 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