Ramage & the Renegades Read Online Free PDF

had seen a patch blown clean out of a sail—and a few moments later the sail itself had split, starting from the hole left by the departed patch. Yes, most interesting, but what the devil was it that the First Lieutenant had ordered him to do? Quickly Paolo tried to remember the conversation. Mr Aitken had said he had just received a letter from the Captain saying he was bringing the Marchesa and his parents down to Chatham for a visit to the
Calypso,
and he wished Midshipman Orsini, able seaman Jackson, and ordinary seamen Rossi and Stafford to be available. Then he said they would be coming down by carriage and mentioned the name of the hotel they would use. And the Commissioner of the dockyard was making his yawl available and they would be leaving the jetty of the Commissioner’s residence to board the ship at ten o’clock in the forenoon. Then what? The chair! That was it: the red baize needed replacing; and a whip had to be rove on the starboard main yardarm.
    The English language was sometimes absurd. On land a whip was something you used on a horse or mule; in a ship it was a small block and a rope. Then there was a block—on land that was a large piece of something, like a block of wood. In a ship a block was what men on land called a pulley. And a sheet! That was the most hilarious of all—on land you found a sheet on a bed, although you could also have a sheet of paper. In a ship a sheet was a rope attached to the corner of a sail to control its shape. A seaman did not “put” a rope through a pulley, he rove it through a block, or he was ordered to reeve it. Paolo saw the First Lieutenant coming up the companion-way. Damn, where was the chair stowed? The bosun would know.
    Aitken paused and looked round him. To an untrained eye there was chaos, with seamen running here and there like ants when their anthill was disturbed, but a seaman could distinguish order. Apart from young Orsini—clearly he had been standing daydreaming—the seventh 12-pounder was already hoisted out and slung over the side, the men under Jackson lowering it into the hoy.
    But devil take it, how was he to have the ship ready for tomorrow’s visitors? The Captain would understand and, from what everyone said, the Marchesa would too. But Admiral the Earl of Blazey was the fifth most senior Admiral in the Navy (he knew that because the moment he received the Captain’s letter, he had looked up the father in the latest edition of Steele’s List of the Navy). Still, even a senior admiral would make allowances for the necessary activity. So that left the Admiral’s wife. Well, all admirals’ wives brought only misery and harassment to first lieutenants, whether of frigates or 100-gun flagships, and the Countess of Blazey was unlikely to be an exception.
    Orsini had finally bestirred himself: no doubt asking the bosun where the chair was stowed. He was a remarkable young lad, and Aitken looked forward to meeting the aunt. It was curious how at first, when he joined the Captain, he had assumed that Paolo’s aunt, the Marchesa, was a wrinkled old Italian dragon, full of unpredictable whims and with enough influence to break a post captain with a pointing index finger and a mere lieutenant with a flick of a little finger. He had been quickly corrected by those who knew her—old Southwick, for instance, who doted on her—and told that she was five feet tall, about 23 years old, and the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. She had striking blue-black hair, large brown eyes—and, when she felt like it, was imperious.
    Still, that was not surprising, because she had once ruled the kingdom of Volterra; her family had done so for centuries, until Bonaparte’s invading army forced her to flee to the coast, to be rescued by the Captain—then a junior lieutenant. And they had fallen in love. Hardened sinners like Jackson, Stafford and Rossi, who were in the ship’s boat that