Copyright & Information

Ramage & The Drumbeat

First published in 1968

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Dudley Pope to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
184232473X	9781842324738	Print
075512426X	9780755124268	Pdf
0755124456	9780755124459	Kindle
0755124626	9780755124626	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Dudley Bernard Egerton Pope was born in Ashford, Kent on 29 December 1925. When at the tender age of fourteen World War II broke out and Dudley attempted to join the Home Guard by concealing his age. At sixteen, once again using a ruse, he joined the merchant navy a year early, signing papers as a cadet with the Silver Line. They sailed between Liverpool and West Africa, carrying groundnut oil.

Before long, his ship was torpedoed in the Atlantic and a few survivors, including Dudley, spent two weeks in a lifeboat prior to being rescued. His injuries were severe and because of them he was invalided out of the merchant service and refused entry into the Royal Navy when officially called up for active service aged eighteen.

Turning to journalism, he set about ‘getting on with the rest of his life’, as the Naval Review Board had advised him. He graduated to being Naval and Defence correspondent with the London Evening News in 1944. The call of the sea, however, was never far away and by the late 1940’s he had managed to acquire his first boat. In it, he took part in cross-channel races and also sailed off to Denmark, where he created something of a stir, his being one of the first yachts to visit the country since the war.

In 1953 he met Kay, whom he married in 1954, and together they formed a lifelong partnership in pursuit of scholarly adventure on the sea. From 1959 they were based in Porto Santo Stefano in Italy for a few years, wintering on land and living aboard during the summer. They traded up boats wherever possible, so as to provide more living space, and Kay Pope states:

‘In September 1963, we returned to England where we had bought the 53 foot cutter Golden Dragon and moved on board where she lay on the east coast. In July 1965, we cruised down the coasts of Spain and Portugal, to Gibraltar, and then to the Canary Islands. Early November of the same year we then sailed across the Atlantic to Barbados and Grenada, where we stayed three years.

Our daughter, Victoria was 4 months old when we left the UK and 10 months when we arrived in Barbados. In April 1968, we moved on board ‘Ramage’ in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands and lost our mainmast off St Croix, when attempting to return to Grenada.’

The couple spent the next nine years cruising between the British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, before going to Antigua in 1977 and finally St.Martin in 1979.

The sea was clearly in Pope’s blood, his family having originated in Padstow, Cornwall and later owning a shipyard in Plymouth. His great-grandfather had actually preceded him to the West Indies when in 1823, after a spell in Canada, he went to St.Vincent as a Methodist missionary, before returning to the family business in Devon.

In later life, Dudley Pope was forced to move ashore because of vertigo and other difficulties caused by injuries sustained during the war. He died in St.Martin in 1997, where Kay now lives. Their daughter, Victoria, has in turn inherited a love of the sea and lives on a sloop, as well as practising her father's initial profession of journalism.

As an experienced seaman, talented journalist and historian, it was a natural progression for Pope to write authoritative accounts of naval battles and his first book, Flag 4: The Battle of Coastal Forces in the Mediterranean, was published in 1954. This was followed in 1956 by the Battle of the River Plate, which remains the most accurate and meticulously researched account of this first turning point for Britain in World War II. Many more followed, including the biography of Sir Henry Morgan, (Harry Morgan’s Way) which has one won wide acclaim as being both scholarly and thoroughly readable. It portrays the history of Britain’s early Caribbean settlement and describes the Buccaneer’s bases and refuges, the way they lived, their ships and the raids they made on the coast of central America and the Spain Main, including the sack of Panama.

Recognising Pope’s talent and eye for detail, C.S. Forrester (the creator of the Hornblower Series) encouraged him to try his hand at fiction. The result, in 1965, was the appearance of the first of the Ramage novels, followed by a further seventeen culminating with Ramage and the Dido which was published in 1989. These follow the career and exploits of a young naval officer, Nicholas Ramage, who was clearly named after Pope’s yacht. He also published the ‘Ned Yorke’ series of novels, which commences as would be expected in the Caribbean, in the seventeenth century, but culminates in ‘Convoy’ and ‘Decoy’ with a Ned Yorke of the same family many generations on fighting the Battle of the Atlantic.

All of Dudley Pope’s works are renowned for their level of detail and accuracy, as well as managing to bring to the modern reader an authentic feeling of the atmosphere of the times in which they are set.

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

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 nearby 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- ships 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 carranades.

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 wrily, 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 uncom-fortable 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.

Because of light winds and brief thunderstorms the Kathleen had covered only four hundred miles in the past eight days – an average of a couple of knots, less than the pace of a child dawdling to school. It was more than eleven hundred miles from Bastia to Gibraltar, and he was only too conscious of the phrase ‘with all possible despatch’ in the Commodore’s orders.

An occasionally outraged growl from behind him told Ramage that Henry Southwick, the elderly and usually almost offensively cheerful Master and his second-in-command, was making a last-minute search before reporting the ship and ship’s company ready for inspection. With a Master like Southwick the Sunday inspection was merely a routine; Ramage knew not a speck of the brick-dust used to polish brasswork, nor a grain of sand lurking in the scuppers after the deck had been holystoned and washed down with a head pump would escape his eye. The cook’s coppers would be shining and each mess’ bread barge, platters and mugs would be spotless and its pudding cloth scrubbed. Every man was already shaved and rigged out in clean shirt and trousers… Yet for all that Southwick would soon ask permission to muster the ship’s company. Then, after the inspection, all hands would be ordered aft for Divine Service, which Ramage would have to conduct himself.

The thought made him self-conscious; he would be taking it for only the sixth time in his life, since he’d commanded the Kathleen for precisely forty-two days and still found it hard to believe that almost the last entry in the cutter’s muster book said, ‘Lieutenant Nicholas Ramage…as per commission dated 19th September 1796…’ The sixth Sunday – and he remembered that under the Regulations and instructions, the captain had to read the thirty-six Articles of War to the ship’s company once a month. Since it could replace a sermon he might as well read them today because the sun was shining, and next Sunday it might be pouring with rain and blowing a gale of wind.

After three years of war all but the most stupid seamen knew by heart the Articles’ forthright exhortations warning everyone in the Fleet, from admirals to boys, of the perils and punishment for the sins of treason, mutiny, blasphemy, cowardice and drunkenness; and they knew in particular the thirty-sixth, nicknamed ‘The Captain’s Cloak’, which was so phrased that it enabled a captain to word a charge to cover any other villainy that the wit and ingenuity of errant seamen might devise. Still, as long as they could then bellow a few hymns to the fearful tunes John Smith the Second scraped on his fiddle, the men would listen patiently enough. After that they’d be piped to dinner and those off watch would spend the rest of the afternoon skylarking, dancing, mending clothes and, Ramage thought gloomily, before sundown – unless they were an exemplary ship’s company – one or two who had hoarded their grog or won extra tots from their messmates, would be brought before him blind drunk…

The Marchesa di Volterra stood under the skylight of the captain’s cabin, which was hers for the voyage, twisting the looking glass in her hand first one way and then the other to make sure no stray locks of hair had escaped from the chignon that she had spent the last ten minutes trying to tie. Her arms ached. She was hot, and for the first time since the Royal Navy, in the shape of Ramage, had rescued her and her cousin from the mainland as they fled before Bonaparte’s cavalry, she wished herself back in her palace at Volterra, where her merest frown would bring a dozen maids running. For the first time in her seventeen years of life (nearly eighteen, she remembered proudly) she really wanted to make herself look beautiful to please a particular man, and she was having to do it in a tiny cabin without a maid, a wardrobe, or jewellery. How did Nicholas ever manage to live in such a cabin? She was much smaller – his chin rested on her head when she stood close – yet the ceiling, or whatever Nicholas called it, was so low that even now she had to stoop to hold the looking glass high enough. Impatiently she flung the glass into the swinging cot and sat down in the single chair in front of the desk which served as a dressing table. Accidenti! What was the use? If only her hair was blonde! Everyone had black hair, and she wanted to look different. Did he like high cheekbones? Hers were much too high. And the mouth – hers was too big and she wished the lips were thinner. And her eyes were too large and brown when she preferred blue or grey-green, like a cat’s. And why was her nose small and slightly hooked, when she wanted a straight one? And her complexion was shaming – the sun had tanned it gold so that she looked like a peasant girl instead of the woman who ruled a city and a kingdom (even if the kingdom was small the city was big). She ruled twenty thousand people, she thought bitterly, and not one of them was here now to help her dress her hair – except her cousin, Antonio, and he’d only laugh and tease.

Well, Antonio could laugh, but he must help. When she called, a heavily built man with a short, squarely trimmed black beard came into the cabin, shoulders bunched to avoid bumping his head on the low beams.

‘Well, well! And whose garden party is my beautiful cousin gracing with her presence today?’

‘There’s only one, my dear Antonio. Hasn’t Lieutenant Ramage invited the elegant Count Pitti? Everyone will be there – Nicholas makes them put on their best clothes and sing hymns. Perhaps he’ll flog some of them with a cat of seven tails just to amuse you.’

‘It doesn’t need it. You’re beautiful and you know it and if you want compliments…’

The question was sudden and unexpected but she neither blushed nor glanced away, Instead she looked directly at him, and said with awe, almost fear, in her voice, ‘I didn’t know it was possible. I was a child before I met him; he’s made me feel a woman. And he – he’s a man, Antonio; everything a man should be. I know only one other man like him.’

‘I hope so,’ he said soberly, ‘though I won’t deserve it. But you have known him – three weeks, a month?’

‘No – but never forget you met him in romantic circumstances. It’s the stuff of story books – the dashing young naval officer sweeping in from the sea to rescue the beautiful Marchesa from beneath the feet of Napoleon’s cavalry and…’

‘I know. I’ve thought all about that. But I’ve also seen him dirty and stinking and exhausted, seen him fighting Napoleon’s cavalrymen with only a knife, seen him unjustly court-martialled on a trumped-up charge of cowardice… Is this the stuff of story books as well?’

Pitti shook his head. ‘No, but when you’re parted? When he’s at sea for months, perhaps years, what then? You’ve never had patience, Gianna. Since you inherited Volterra you’ve been able to have everything you wanted – at once.’

‘That’s true,’ she admitted. ‘But they were material things: jewels, gay balls, excitement. I think perhaps I wanted all that so urgently because I hadn’t met him. When you’ve no one to love, to confide in – to live for, in fact – you get bored; you need entertaining. When there’s no sun, you need many candles everywhere.’

Even as she smiled she realized she knew very little about him in the conventional sense; but in the past month when the two of them had together faced so much danger, adventure, death and intrigue she’d learned things about him that in normal times a woman might live with a man a lifetime without discovering. And apart from the times of immediate danger she’d seen him in the secret agony of making decisions on which his men’s lives depended. She’d seen what probably none of his men ever saw, that command was desperately lonely, particularly for someone as young and sensitive as Nicholas. He’d been given command at an early age and it hadn’t yet (nor, she knew, would it ever) brutalized him so he became callous about his men.

‘He was twenty-one years old a few weeks ago and he’s been at sea since he was thirteen; the scar on his forehead is a sword wound from when he was boarding a French frigate last year, and when he’s nervous or under a strain he rubs it and blinks and has trouble pronouncing the letter “r”. I don’t really know why he never uses his title – as an earl’s son he has one, and the Navy uses it in official letters – but I think it makes social difficulties with superior officers if he is called “Lord”. His parents knew mine, Oh, Antonio, I sound like a catalogue. I can’t describe him!’

‘Yes. Perhaps you can remember the famous trial of Admiral the Earl of Blazey? I was too young. No? Well, anyway, that was Nicholas’ father. The French sailed a large fleet to the West Indies and the Earl was sent out much too late with a tiny British fleet. He fought them bravely but he didn’t win; nor did the French. Then the English people, who didn’t know how few ships the Earl had – and they were old and decrepit anyway – made a terrible fuss and the Government got frightened. Like all Governments it wouldn’t admit its mistake, so it court-martialled the Earl because he didn’t capture all the French ships.’

‘Yes – he had to be, to save the Ministers. He was the scapegoat. If he’d been found innocent then obviously the Government was guilty. Apparently the judges in a naval court martial are naval officers, and since many of them are mixed up in politics it was easy for the, Government – the Admiralty, anyway, which is the same thing – to choose officers supporting its own party for the court martial, Commodore Nelson told me it often happens. He says politics are the curse of the Navy!’

‘So the Earl must still have many enemies in the Navy, and this affects Nicholas. A sort of vendetta…’

‘Yes, very much so. That horrible man who had Nicholas court-martialled at Bastia after he had rescued me was the protégé of one of them, but luckily Commodore Nelson knew all about that.’

‘If the Earl still has enemies among the admirals, Nicholas will always be in danger,’ reflected Antonio. ‘You can always put someone in the wrong if you want to… Nicholas realizes that?’

‘Yes I’m sure he does, though he’s never mentioned it to me. But I often sensed, when he was making some important decision, that – well, he knew that even if there were only two alternatives, his father’s enemies would say whichever he chose was the wrong one. It never affected his decisions – just that I felt there was always something lurking in the shadows, threatening him. As if he knew he had the Evil Eye on him…’

‘Yes – a strange man. No one knows much about him, but he has a great respect for Nicholas – even though he’s twice his age. It’s curious – when they’re in danger they seem to be able to read each other’s thoughts.’

Just then a shrill warbling note of a bosun’s call echoed through the ship, followed by shouted orders. ‘Time for church,’ Antonio grinned. ‘Your Nicholas makes a good priest!’

Southwick was glad the inspection and Divine Service was over, and watching a handful of men dancing on the fo’c’sle as John Smith the Second perched on the barrel of the windlass scratching at his fiddle, he was thankful the Kathleen had such a good ship’s company. Out of the sixty-three men on board he’d like to change only a couple, whereas most ships he’d previously served in had only a couple of really good men out of five score.

But trust Mr Ramage to spot something, he thought ruefully. Every captain he’d ever served under looked for brick-dust, sand, dirty coppers or a bit of mildewed biscuit in a bread barge. But not Mr Ramage. Out of nearly two hundred round shot in the racks beside the carronades he’d spotted two that had sufficient rust scale under the black paint to make them no longer completely spherical, so that they might stick in the barrel while being loaded and also wouldn’t fly true. The man who noticed that without passing each one through a shot gauge could see through a four-inch plank. Yet Southwick readily admitted, although he was only a youngster, Mr Ramage was the first captain he’d ever served under who was more concerned with the way a ship could fight than the way it could be scrubbed and polished, and that was a dam’ good thing since there was a war on. And in twenty-six years at sea he never thought he’d ever daily see men actually enjoying three solid hours of gun drill in the hot sun of the forenoon followed by two more before hammocks were piped down. Still, a lot of it was due to the Marchesa. Southwick didn’t know whether it was her idea or Mr Ramage’s, but having her standing there with Mr Ramage’s watch in her hand timing them certainly kept the men on their toes. And it rounded off the day nicely when she awarded the prize tots of Mr Ramage’s brandy to the crew of the gun that had been first to report ‘Ready to Fire!’ the most times.

But Southwick was certain the Kathleen was a happy and efficient ship simply because, young as he was, every man on board trusted Mr Ramage as their captain. His twenty-six years at sea had taught the Master that that was the only thing that mattered. Certainly, under the regulations they had to salute the captain and call him ‘Sir’; but they’d have done so anyway. Although he was quick enough to rub ’em down for slack sail-handling or slowness in running out the guns, the ship’s company knew Mr Ramage could do most things better than they and he had a happy knack of proving it when necessary with a matter-of-fact smile on his face, so that the men, far from being resentful, took it as, well, a sort of challenge.

Suddenly remembering he was still holding his quadrant, Southwick picked up the slate and went down to his cabin to work out the noon sight he had just taken. Mr Ramage would soon be calling for the day’s reckoning, since at sea the new day began at noon.

Ramage felt like singing. He’d watched a tiny wind shadow dancing over the sea to the north; then more appeared and closed with the Kathleen. Within a minute or two he had the men cheering as they heaved down on the halyards, hoisting the great mainsail, then the largest of the cutter’s jibs and foresails. A few moments later the maintopsail was set, followed by the jib topsail, and while the men afted the sheets under Southwick’s orders, Ramage looked at his watch and then at the luffs of the sails.

When the Master saw the last sail trimmed properly, he bawled ‘Belay that’ to the sheetmen and swung round to Ramage, an inquiring look on his face. Ramage, noticing the men had also stopped to look at him, put his watch back in his pocket with deliberate slowness and shook his head.

Southwick looked crestfallen and he sensed the men’s genuine disappointment so that he was slightly ashamed of his deception and called with a grin, ‘All right, all right, you’ve just beaten the record – by half a minute!’

Southwick slapped his knee with delight – he’d obviously been thinking of a few seconds – and the men were laughing as the Master dismissed them. Southwick and all except those on watch went below. Ramage, disappointed Gianna did not stay on deck now the Kathleen was under way once again, decided against sending for her to enjoy the breeze with him because she might be sleeping. Then for no apparent reason he suddenly felt uneasy, and he remembered how his mother sometimes shivered and said, ‘Someone’s walking over my grave!’

CHAPTER TWO

When he was sober, John Smith the Second looked sly and foxy, an impression heightened by his small, wiry body; but once he had sunk his tot of rum – and any others he’d won by gambling – his features softened and the shifty eyes settled down so his drink-mottled face had the blissful look of a poacher after a successful night’s raid on the squire’s game preserves. Rated in the muster book as an able seaman, and listed as ‘the Second’ to distinguish him from another seaman of the same name, Smith was also the Kathleen’s band. He had a fiddle which, as long as he was not sober, he enjoyed playing, and Sunday was his busy day. He played hymns for the service in the forenoon, and in the afternoon sat on the barrel of the windlass scraping away as the men danced.

Ramage had been on watch for half an hour and although he valued Smith both as a seaman and a means of keeping the men happy, the sawing of the fiddle was an outrage to a musical ear; so much so that Ramage felt he could cheerfully shoot the fiddle out of John Smith the Second’s nimble fingers.

Suddenly he remembered the case of duelling pistols which the Viceroy of Corsica, Sir Gilbert Elliot, an old friend of his family, had sent on board at Bastia as a present when he heard Ramage had been given his first command. He had not yet had time to try them out, and now was a good opportunity. He passed the word and a few moments later Jackson had the brass-edged mahogany case open on the cabin skylight, wiping off the protective film of oil from both the pistols. They were a beautiful matched pair made by Joseph Manton, whose lion and unicorn label was stuck inside the lid of the case. Each gun had a long hexagonal barrel and a rich-grained walnut stock.

Ramage picked up one of them. It was perfectly balanced. The stock fitted into his palm as though the pistol was a natural extension of his arm; his index finger curled round the trigger as if the gun had been specially made for his hand. And the mahogany case was fitted with a mould for casting shot, a stamp for cutting out wads, flasks of powder and a box of extra flints. The set was, Ramage thought, a credit to the gun maker of Hanover Square, and he richly deserved the proud announcement on the label, ‘Gun Maker to His Majesty’.

‘It’s a lovely piece, sir,’ he said, handing it to Ramage. ‘I’ll go down and get some bits of wood from the carpenter’s mate to use as targets.’

A few minutes later Jackson was back with a bundle of wood under his arm. Ramage, who had loaded the second pistol, climbed up on to the breech of the aftermost carronade, balancing himself against the roll of the ship. He sighted with the pistol in his right hand, then tried the left.

The wood arched up into the air and splashed into the sea several yards off and began drawing away as the ship sailed on.

Ramage had cocked the pistol and brought up his right arm straight from his side, sighted along the flat top of the barrel, and squeezed the trigger. A tiny plume of water, like a feather, jumped up two yards beyond the piece of wood.

Almost at once Ramage fired the second pistol with his left hand. The wood jumped and the shot whined off in ricochet.

Ramage grinned. It had been a lucky shot because usually he had a tendency to pull a pistol to the left when firing with his left hand.

He gave both pistols back to Jackson to re-load and as he jumped down from the carronade he saw Gianna coming up the companionway.

Southwick came up, and then Antonio joined them and watched Jackson as he rammed the shot home.

‘Duelling pistols, Nico? Surely they’re rather long in the barrel for use in a ship?’

‘Yes – but a pleasant change. Our Sea Service models are so heavy on the trigger you need to jam the muzzle in a man’s stomach to be sure of hitting him. But these – just a touch on the trigger.’

She looked at him scornfully, lifted her skirts and scrambled on to the carronade.

Without waiting for a reply she cocked the pistol and fired. The shot sent up a tiny spurt of water several feet beyond the piece of floating weed.

‘It’s not fair. I do not pay. Let’s have a proper match. You and your knife and me with this pistol.’

‘Be careful, Nico,’ warned Antonio. ‘Don’t forget her mother wanted a son and brought her up as a boy! She shoots like a hunter, rides like a jockey and gambles like a fool!’

Gianna gave a mock curtsy from atop the carronade. ‘Thank-you, cousin Antionio. You see, Nico how close are the family ties among Italians!’

‘Tell me, Nico,’ interrupted Antonio, ‘surely throwing a knife isn’t part of a sailor’s training?’

Ramage laughed. ‘No – that’s Italian training! When my parents lived in Italy – they did for a few years – we had a Sicilian coachman. He taught me.’

‘Come on,’ Gianna exclaimed impatiently. ‘Jackson will throw something into the sea and I hit it at the count of ten. You, Nico,’ she looked round, ‘you have to hit the mast with your knife while standing by that steering stick thing.’

Although her voice was still bantering he knew she was not joking. He looked puzzled and she pointed to his left hand. When he lifted it she indicated the gold signet ring with the rampant griffin crest on his little finger.

Still holding the pistol, she had turned her right hand just enough to let him see the heavy gold ring she was wearing on the middle finger.

Shrugging her shoulders with apparent ill grace she said, ‘Very well. But if you win the first time you give me another chance.’

Ramage was just going to refuse when he realized her subtlety: if she lost and then won, they could exchange rings without anyone knowing. It was childish but he felt elated: their secret was a secret yet they took pleasure in almost flaunting it.

‘All right, but Antonio must hold the stakes,’ he said, pulling off his signet ring. He turned to call for Jackson and saw he and Southwick were standing nearby, Southwick holding a small wooden cask.

The shout from aloft suddenly reminded them that for the last fifteen minutes everyone except the lookout and the two men at the helm had forgotten the Kathleen was a ship of war.

‘There’s a hulk or summat – maybe a small island – fine on the starboard bow, sir.’

‘Well, sir, no masts nor nothin’, yet looks like a hull. S’just lifting over the horizing, sir.’

Southwick handed his telescope to Jackson. ‘Here, get aloft with this bring-’em-near and see what you make of it.’

This aspect of commanding a ship annoyed Ramage: a few weeks ago when he was junior lieutenant in a frigate he’d have been up the ratlines in a moment, having a look for himself. Now, as captain of the tiny Kathleen but with the same powers of life and death over his crew as the captain of a great three-decker, he had to maintain an appearance of calm detachment – at least, he thought ruefully, he would if Gianna was not on board, cheerfully turning a dull voyage into a fête.

The lanky, sandy-haired American ran up the ratlines as effortlessly as if hauled up by an invisible halyard. Once astride the cro’jack yard he paused to pull out the tubes of the telescope and then looked in the direction the lookout was pointing.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.’

Antonio stuck an arm out sideways. ‘But don’t their guns point out at right angles, like ours? Surely they can’t shoot straight ahead or behind?’

‘Yes, they’re broadside guns, and we could keep out of their arc of fire. But they could use their bow and stern chasers.’

‘Most ships have two special ports aft and two forward. You just haul round a couple of broadside guns and aim ’em through the ports,’ he explained, gesturing aft. ‘That’s what those two ports are for.’

‘But can’t we risk being shot at by just two guns?’ Antonio persisted. ‘After all, they’ll be rolling, and without sails they can’t swing the ship round to aim a broadside, can they?’

‘No, but even if she had no guns, how can we possibly capture two hundred and fifty men who’d strongly object to us boarding the ship, let alone take them prisoner?’

‘Well, if they haven’t any guns,’ interrupted Gianna triumphantly, ‘why can’t we just keep shooting at them until they surrender?’

‘I didn’t say they haven’t any guns,’ Ramage said, fighting to conceal his exasperation. ‘I simply said “If they hadn’t” – but they have.’

‘Oh well, it’s a pity. We should cut a fine figure towing that big ship into Gibraltar.’

‘If you can imagine a little donkey pulling a large cart loaded with blocks of Carrara marble all the way over the Alps, that’s about how we’d be towing that. She displaces – if you put her on the scales you’d find she weighs about 1,300 tons against our 160 tons.’