Read Online Ramage's Mutiny by Dudley Pope - Free Book Online

Blazey. How many men in the Navy had a title but refused to use it? Perhaps he would now that he was a captain. According to Southwick it had started when he was a midshipman, when a twelve-year-old with a title might find himself in difficulties on shore when he ranked above his captain socially, and often his admiral as well.
    Aitken tried to picture Captain Ramage as a young midshipman. He must be about twenty-five now. No doubt as a youngster he would have been in constant trouble with his mathematics:
    even now he knew just enough to make him a good navigator, but no more, and would often make jokes at his own expense about his poor mathematics, or tease Southwick, who had an uncanny knack for adding up rows of figures in his head. What he lacked in mathematics he made up for in seamanship: Aitken had watched him handling the ship on scores of occasions and he did it quite instinctively. As a good rider seems part of his horse, so Captain Ramage seemed to be part of the ship. The way he handled the
Juno
when he put her alongside this very ship, for example …
    Twenty-five was Aitken’s age as well, but Ramage had had half a dozen or more
Gazettes
almost to himself. Wounded three times, sunk twice: it was a remarkable record. Would his luck hold? Luck did not come into the tactics Captain Ramage used. He was lucky only because so far he had not been cut down by a cannon ball or hit by a musket shot.
    Perhaps the most remarkable thing about him was that he had earned every bit of promotion. Having a father who was both an admiral and the holder of one of the oldest earldoms in the country would normally have ensured rapid promotion; but for much of his career the Admiral had been out of favour with the government—the scapegoat, Southwick said, for some mistake the government of the day had made many years ago.
    Aitken tucked in his shirt and sat down to cool off. From an officer’s point of view, the worst thing about the Captain was that his face gave nothing away—unless you watched his eyes. He could be in a fury or he could be making a joke (he had a dry wit) but his face revealed nothing, except for the eyes. They were set deep, like the muzzles of guns in the ports before they were run out, but when he was angry they fixed on you; you could no more avoid them than if they were a pair of pistols aimed at your head.
    Those alarming eyes were going to have plenty of work to do: the
Calypso
was a fine-looking ship, and from all accounts sailed like a witch, but she would need a broomstick to get into Santa Cruz to cut out the
Jocasta.
Luckily, most of the ship’s company had been in action together several times.
    He heard the steward clattering plates and cutlery as he set the table outside in the gunroom. This was what he had missed while commanding the
Juno,
the company of men like Bowen and Southwick and Wagstaffe. Phew, he was tired—as indeed every man on board must be, after today’s work. The ship still looked a mess to the untrained eye, but she would be ready long before the court martial reached a verdict on the mutineers. In a strange way he wished he had never sighted that Jonathan and taken them off. It was one thing to kill four men with a round shot fired at an enemy in battle; it was another to cause four men to be hanged from the yardarms.
    He found he was dreading the sound of the signal gun calling the captains to the flagship for the trial.

CHAPTER FIVE
    A T PRECISELY seven o’clock on Monday morning the muffled thud of a signal gun echoed up the channel and across the dockyard, bouncing off the hills and finally losing itself among the valleys. Pelicans paddling lazily round the
Calypso
suddenly took off, frantically launching themselves with clumsy thrusts from their webbed feet; tiny green herons squawked off into the shelter of the mangrove roots.
    Ramage watched the smoke from the
Invincible
’s gun drift away to leeward and saw high at her mizenmasthead