Dudley Pope - Ramage and the drum beat

The heat and humidity of a Mediterranean summer made the watermark in the paper stand out like a fading scar, and traces of mildew left a tarnished gilt outline round the edges. The orders, in a clerk's careful handwriting that was sufficiently faint to indicate he was short of powder to make the ink, were dated 21st October, 1796, headed 'By Commodore Horatio Nelson, Commander of His Majesty's ship Diadem and senior officer of His Majesty's ships and vessels at Bastia,' and addressed to 'Lieutenant Lord Ramage, Commander of His Majesty's ship Kathleen'. They said, with a directness reflecting the Commodore's manner:

'You are hereby required and directed to receive on board His Majesty's ship under your command the persons of the Marchesa di Volterra and Count Pitti, and to proceed with all possible despatch to Gibraltar, being careful to follow a southerly route to avoid interception by enemy ships of war ... On arrival at Gibraltar you will report forthwith to the Admiral commanding to receive orders for your further proceedings.'

And be told, Ramage guessed, that the Marchesa and Pitti would go to England in a much bigger ship. The Kathleen would then almost certainly be ordered to rejoin the Commodore's squadron, which should have finished evacuating the British troops from Bastia (leaving the whole of Corsica in rebel and French hands) and have sailed back to the island of Elba to salvage what it could as General Bonaparte's troops swept southward down the Italian mainland like a river in full flood.

Genoa, Pisa, Milan, Florence, Leghorn and by now perhaps even Civitavecchia and Rome ... Each city and port that was beautiful and useful to the French would have a Tricolour and a wrought iron Tree of Liberty (with the absurd Red Cap of Liberty perched on top) set up in its main piazza, with a guillotine near by for those unable to stomach the Tree's bitter fruit.

Yet, he thought ironically, it's an ill wind ... Thanks to Bonaparte's invasion, His Majesty's cutter Kathleen was now the first command of Lieutenant Ramage; and thanks to Bonaparte - an unlikely enough Cupid - one of those who had fled before his troops was on board the Kathleen and the said Lieutenant Ramage had fallen in love with her....

He scratched his face with the feather of his quill pen and thought of another set of orders, the secret orders which had, like a fuse leading to a row of powder kegs, set off a series of explosions which had rocked his career for the past couple of months.

On 1st September, the date those orders were issued to the captain of the Sibella frigate, he had been the junior of three lieutenants on board. The orders, known only to the captain, had been to take the Sibella to a point off the Italian coast and rescue several Italian nobles who had fled from the French and were hiding near the beach.

But a chance evening meeting with a French line of battle ship had left the Sibella a shattered wreck, with himself the only surviving officer, and as night came down he'd been able to escape in the remaining boats with the unwounded men. And before quitting the Sibella he'd grabbed the dead captain's secret orders.

Supposing he had thrown them over the side in the special weighted box kept for the purpose? That's what he should have done, since there was a considerable risk that the French would capture him.

Well he hadn't; instead he'd read them in the open boat - and found that only a few miles away the Marchesa di Volterra and two cousins, Counts Pitti and Pisano, with several other nobles, were waiting to be rescued. The fact that the Volterras were old friends of his parents hadn't influenced his decision (no, he was sure it hadn't) to take one of the boats and carry out the rescue.

And everything had gone wrong. Only the Marchesa and her two cousins had finally risked escaping in the boat, and he'd bungled the whole business. Surprised by French cavalry, Pitti had apparently been killed by a shot which destroyed his face, and Ramage had been lucky to get the Marchesa and Pisano away safely.

Lucky ... it was an odd word for him to choose; the Marchesa had been wounded and Pisano, who'd behaved in a cowardly fashion - so much so that the seamen in the boat were shocked by what they saw - had suddenly accused him of cowardice. And when he'd got them safely to Corsica, Pisano had repeated the accusations in writing.

He shivered as he thought of the resulting court martial. It was bad luck that the senior officer ordering the trial had been an enemy of his father's; it was almost unbelievable how the Marchesa had suddenly thrown aside all loyalty to her cousin and given evidence on Ramage's behalf, not only denying that he'd been a coward but declaring that, on the contrary, he'd been a hero....

And at the end of it all, with the wretched Pisano discredited, Count Pitti had suddenly arrived in Bastia. Far from being shot in the face, he had twisted his ankle while running alone to the boat and, rather than delay his rescuers, hidden under a bush.

Although both the Marchesa and Antonio Pitti had subsequently been fulsome in their praise to Commodore Nelson (who'd arrived in Bastia while the court martial was in progress) Ramage admitted to himself the trial had been more of a blow to his pride than anyone (except perhaps Gianna) had guessed. The proof was that he kept on thinking about it.

He sat up impatiently: the devil take it, the whole business was over and done with now and this was no time for sitting here like an old hen brooding over it. He folded the Commodore's orders, which he now knew by heart, opened his log book, and dipped the pen in the ink.

Against the time of nine o'clock and under the columns headed courses and winds, he wrote with a petulant flourish of his pen 'Becalmed'. In the next column headed remarks he noted, 'Sunday, 30th October 1796. Ship's Company employed atsr. 10 o'clock Divisions. 10.30 Divine Service. 11.30 clear decks and up spirits. 12 dinner.'

He disliked the abbreviation atsr but it was customary: 'as the Service required' usually appeared at least twice a day in a log book.

Since it was still only half past nine he'd anticipated the rest of the morning's routine, but his temporary cabin was dark, hot and airless and he hated it. He wiped the pen impatiently, smearing ink on his thumb, locked up the log and his orders, and went up on deck, acknowledging the sentry's salute with a curt nod.

The discontented scowl on his face warned the men to keep clear as he strode off. He always detested Sundays at sea because of all the rigmarole it entailed for the commanding officer of one of His Majesty's ships of war, even if he was but a very junior lieutenant and the ship of war a very small cutter armed with only ten corranades.

But even more he detested being becalmed in the Mediterranean on a late autumn day when the long oily swell waves gave no hint of a breeze arriving in the next hour, or even the next week. Purgatory must be something like this, he thought wryly, though he had the advantage over everyone else on board since he could display his irritation and they could not.

Leaning over the taffrail he watched the crest of each swell wave coming up astern to see-saw the cutter, lifting first her buoyant counter and then sweeping forward to raise the bow and let the counter drop into the trough with a squelch like a foot in a sodden boot.

It was an irregular, unnatural and thoroughly uncomfortable motion, like dice in a shaker, and everything on board that could move did move: the slides of the heavy, squat carronades squeaked and the ropes of their side-tackles groaned under the jerky strain; the halyard blocks banged and the halyards themselves slatted against the mast. And - the last straw as far as Ramage was concerned - the headsails were lashed down to the foot of their stays, the big mainsail furled and the wind vane at the masthead spun round and round on its spindle as the mast gyrated, instead of indicating the wind's direction.