Ramage & the Saracens Read Online Free PDF Page B

side and look for himself, Jackson had not believed the Cockney, thinking he was indulging in some complicated joke.
    What he saw left him speechless. When he found his tongue again he said: “And not a broadside fired! What do we do now—offer them a tow?”
    â€œYus,” exclaimed Stafford. “Tow ‘em to Toulon and get a reward from Boney!”
    â€œAre we just going to leave them like that?” asked Louis, after looking through the port.
    â€œI don’t reckon we’ve much choice,” Jackson said. “They may have lost their masts, but their batteries are still in place. Every gun loaded, too.”
    â€œI know how you feel, Louis,” Rossi said sympathetically. “I’d like to go across and set fire to them.”
    Stafford laughed quietly to himself. “What a story we’ve got to tell. Two line-of-battle ships an’ we didn’t fire a single broadside.”
    â€œBluff, that’s what it was,” Jackson said. “And carelessness on the part of the French captain. He tried to sidestep us when he saw we were after his bowsprit—and stepped right into his mate!”
    â€œVery careless,” Stafford said. “Look what a mess it’s got him into.”
    â€œGot them both into,” Louis said. “Neither would do as dancing masters!”
    Two hours later, with the
Calypso
back on her original course, the two disabled ships were just tiny blobs far astern, their hulls slowly dipping below the horizon. In the frigate the men had stood down from general quarters; the guns had been unloaded, run in and secured. The deck had been washed down and the sand brushed out of the scuppers. The match tubs had been emptied and the slowmatches extinguished, rolled up in coils like light line and returned to the magazine along with all the flintlocks, prickers and cartridges.
    Now the men were waiting to be piped to dinner; they were still gossiping excitedly among themselves about the collision and speculating on their fate if the French captain of the ship of the line had not lost his nerve at the last moment to avoid the
Calypso
.
    On the quarterdeck, Ramage was thinking of the report he had to write about the episode. It was a bizarre affair, and it was going to sound even more bizarre when reduced to the bare wording of a stylized letter to the Admiralty, beginning with the usual: “Sir, be pleased to inform their Lordships …”
    The report had to go to the Admiralty because he was sailing under Admiralty orders; otherwise it would be to a commander-in-chief, and he would probably be seeing the admiral personally at the time he handed in the letter containing the report.
    The watch changed and the third lieutenant, George Hill, took over the deck from Kenton. Hill was an unusual man: debonair, tall and thin, he was bilingual, thanks to a French mother who had married his father, a banker, and then found herself almost completely unable to learn English.
    He had a dry sense of humour which Ramage found amusing; he was a very competent officer, and the men liked him. Almost more important, he could make Southwick laugh.
    â€œHave you ever heard of a collision like that one, sir?” he asked Ramage.
    â€œNo, never. But they were unusual circumstances.”
    â€œPerhaps we were lucky in coming across a Frenchman so sensitive about his jib-boom and bowsprit.”
    Ramage laughed and then said: “If I’d been him I’d have been just as sensitive. If you’re a Frenchman this is no place to lose a foremast.”
    â€œYou’d already worked that out, sir?”
    Ramage shook his head. “No,” he said frankly, “at the time it seemed the only way of escaping from at least one of the Frenchmen. Not escaping really, of course, since we’d have been pinned by him, maybe even holed. But that would have been better than being trapped between them and pounded to pieces: we’d have lost most