Dudley Pope - Ramage and the drum beat

Henry Southwick, whose cherubic face and flowing white hair gave him the appearance of a benevolent parson, would celebrate his sixtieth birthday in a few weeks' time, a fact he remembered as he glanced at Ramage. Although the young captain was a year or two over a third of his age and they'd served together for little more than five weeks, Southwick sensed that given a long war and that Ramage survived the intrigues of his father's enemies and the efforts of the French and Spanish, every man that ever sailed with Mr. Ramage would spend his dotage boasting about it to his grandchildren, and Southwick admitted he'd be no exception. Young captains usually annoyed him. He'd served under too many who had been given commands because their fathers owned enough cash and countryside to ensure their own nominees were elected to Parliament. All too often, when grumbling about the blatant inexperience of some young puppy in command, he'd met with the reply, 'Well, his father's worth a couple of votes to the Government.' (What's the ratio of pastureland to patronage? he wondered sourly.) Anyway, none of that could be said about Mr. Ramage, since the Government had tried to get his father shot, like poor old Admiral Byng.

Southwick saw Ramage was blinking again, as though looking at a bright light, and rubbing the scar over his right brow. Although recognizing the warning signal, Southwick wondered what had caused it and, glancing at the Marchesa, saw she too had noticed and was watching with anxiety and affection in her face.

A well-matched pair, he thought, and he could well understand her love (although he was sure Mr. Ramage was quite unaware of the depth of it). Sentimentally, picturing the Marchesa as his daughter, the old Master tried to see Ramage through her eyes. He had that classical build like the Greek statues he'd seen in the Morea, with wide shoulders and slim hips, light on his feet and the kind of walk that'd betrayed him as a man born to lead, even if he was dressed in rags. But as far as Southwick was concerned the eyes revealed most: dark brown, deep set over high cheekbones and slung under bushy eyebrows (which met in a straight line when he was angry or excited), they could look as cold and dangerous as the muzzles of a pair of pistols. Yet he had a dry, straight-faced sense of humour which the men liked, although Southwick admitted that often he only realized he was having his leg pulled when he noticed the tiny wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. 'Deck there,' hailed Jackson. 'A hulk, for certain.'

'Can y' make out her build?' yelled Southwick, suddenly jerked back into the present.

'Not yet. She's stern on but yawing around.'

Southwick knew it couldn't have been an island - there was no land for miles; but what was a dismasted ship doing out here? Suddenly he remembered the previous afternoon's squall. At first he'd taken it for just another Mediterranean autumn thunderstorm, one of the usual couple a day. But as it approached Mr. Ramage had come on deck, seen it and at once called to him to get every stitch of canvas off the ship, and as Southwick had passed on the order he'd been hard put to keep the surprise and doubt out of his voice. But Mr. Ramage had been right; three minutes after the last gasket had been tied, securing the furled sails and leaving the ship rolling in a near calm, a seemingly solid wall of wind had hit the Kathleen and, with only the mast, spars, furled sails and hull to get leverage on, heeled her right over until water poured in at the gun and oar ports, and it had taken extra men at the tiller to get her to bear away under bare poles.

Southwick had expected her to capsize and knew he'd never fathom how Mr. Ramage guessed there was so much wind in that particular thunderstorm. It'd seemed no larger and its clouds were no blacker than any of the others. But a ship whose captain hadn't known - well, even if she hadn't capsized, her masts would have certainly gone by the board.

He looked at Ramage and as their eyes met he knew the lieutenant had worked all that out even before Jackson had started up the ratlines.

'One of ours, sir?'

'I doubt it; not in this position.*

With that Ramage went below to use the desk in his own cabin, ducking his head under the beams and acknowledging the sentry's salute. Even with his neck bent he could not stand upright, although it hardly mattered since the cabin was too small to walk around. And at the moment there could be no mistaking it was temporarily the quarters of a young woman accustomed to having several servants running around after her: flimsy and intimate silk garments edged with delicate lace were strewn on the desk, others tossed into the cot. As he lifted several from the desk he saw one still held the shape of Gianna's body; she must have flung it off when she changed for lunch. Quite deliberately Ramage pictured the naked Eve carved by Ghiberti on the east doors of the Baptistry in Florence - an Eve for whom Gianna might have been the model: the same small, slim, bold body; the same small, bold breasts, flat belly ... He swept the clothes aside, unlocked the second drawer and took out a thick book with a mottled brown cover labelled Signal Book for Ships of War.

Towards the end he found some handwriting on pages left clear of print which listed the numbers and positions of the various rendezvous for ships of the Mediterranean Fleet. He noted the latitude and longitude of the nearest, Number Eleven, and pulled a chart from the rack above the desk. The rendezvous was seventy-five miles to the eastward of the Kathleen's present position - and with the wind they'd been having it ruled out any chance the dismasted ship was a British frigate waiting like a sentry at the rendezvous with fresh orders or information for ships ordered to call there.

He put a finger on the chart. The Kathleen was here, about a hundred miles due west of the southern tip of Sardinia, because he was going well south to skirt the African coast, at the same time giving a wide berth to Majorca, Minorca and the south-eastern corner of Spain. The ship ahead was much too far north to be British and bound from Naples, Malta or the Levant to Gibraltar. He glanced at the top of the chart. Toulon - yes, a French ship from the eastward and bound for the great naval base could be here. But he saw Barcelona to the west and, farther south, Cartagena, were also possible destinations for Spanish warships whose captains would be anxious to keep to the northward because of the shoals and unpredictable currents along the low-lying African coast. A ship returning after rounding Corsica and Sardinia (as he knew several Spanish ships had done recently watching for the British Fleet) might also be here.

He heard Jackson shouting from aloft but could not make out the words, and after replacing the chart and locking up the Signal Book, turned to leave the cabin just as Southwick came down the companionway.

'Jackson says she's a frigate sir,' the Master explained, following Ramage up the ladder. 'Swept clean and not a stick set as a jury rig. Says she looks Spanish built'

'Very well, Mr. Southwick: continue heading up towards her until we can be sure.'

Gianna and Antonio both looked excited as they walked over to meet him. 'If she's Spanish, we can pull her to Gibraltar,' Antonio said.

Ramage shook his head. 'There'll be no towing, unless she's British.'

'Oh!' exclaimed Gianna. 'Why not?'

'I—'

'Deck there!' hailed Jackson. 'She's definitely Spanish built.'

Southwick acknowledged the hail and Ramage turned away to avoid answering Gianna's question, but she repeated it.

'Because, madam,' Ramage said heavily, 'We have a ship's company of sixty-three and we carry ten carronades, each of which fire a 6-pound shot for less than five hundred yards. If that ship over there is a Spanish frigate, she has about two hundred and fifty men on board, and probably soldiers as well, and carries at least thirty-six guns which fire a 12-pound shot for fifteen hundred yards. Any one of those shot could cripple us - they're more than four and a half inches in diameter - and if we were hit on the waterline by a couple of them we'd sink.'