these Eyetalians. Some sign on with Boney, while the others bolt. ’Ow the hell do they know which to do?’
That, thought Ramage, sums it up fairly neatly. And now after eight years he was about to return to this beautiful, lazy, flamboyant country, which was so full of contradictions that only an insensitive fool could say with any certainty that he loved or hated it, or any stage in between.
‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir: you speak the lingo, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
Heavens, the men either trusted him so much they felt they could ask questions without getting a savage snub, or they were taking advantage of him, ‘being familiar’, as some officers called it. But their interest was genuine enough.
‘How’s that, sir?’ asked the same nasal voice.
Why not tell them? They’d all stopped talking to hear his reply, and for the next couple of days he needed every ounce of trust they’d give him.
‘Well, when my father sailed in ’77 to command the American Station – when your people showed signs of wanting to be independent,’ he said jokingly to Jackson, ‘my mother came out to Italy to stay with various friends: she loved travelling – she still does, for that matter. I was two years old. I had an Italian nurse and began to speak Italian almost as soon as I did English.
‘We went back to England in ’82 when I was seven. Most of you know the reason… In ’83, after my father’s trial, he decided to leave England for a few years, and we came back to Italy. So I was out here again from the time I was eight until just before I was thirteen, when we returned to England and I first went to sea.’
‘That was when the press caught you, was it, sir?’
The rest of them roared with laughter at the blood-stained man’s joke. A good half of the men had been hauled in by press gangs and brought on board one or other of the King’s ships, where they were given the chance to ‘volunteer’, which meant they received a bounty of a few shillings, and had ‘vol’ instead of ‘prest’ written against their names in the muster book.
‘Yes,’ said Ramage, joining in the laughter, ‘but I took the bounty.’
The men had rested enough and he gave the orders for them to start rowing again. Ahead, lying low in the water like a sea monster, was the flat-topped islet of Giannutri. Although the chart did not give much detail, the nearest point to the mainland, Punta Secca, had a scattering of inlets just south of it. But the name, Dry Point, did not hold out much hope of finding drinking water.
Ramage ran his fingers through his hair and winced as they caught in clotted blood at the back of his scalp. He had forgotten about the cut. At least it had dried up quickly. At Giannutri, he thought to himself, he would have to do something towards tidying himself: at the moment he must look more like a highwayman than a naval officer.
Chapter Five
Jackson watched as the upper rim of the sun finally dropped below the low hills of Giannutri and spread a welcome cool shadow across the eastern side of the island. He glanced at the watch: another half an hour before his spell as lookout ended and he had to wake Mr Ramage.
They had been lucky in finding this little inlet, which was cut out of the rock as neatly as if someone had sliced it with a knife. The boat was almost invisible to a man standing on the shore five yards away, whereas the sides of the inlet, only a few inches higher than the gunwale of the boat, meant they could keep a lookout all round them.
For much of the morning Mr Ramage had been sitting on the side of the hill, glass to his eye, studying the mainland. As soon as he had located the Tower of Buranaccio, just at the back of the beach, its base hidden by the sand dunes and the curvature of the earth, he had ordered all the seamen to be brought up, two at a time, to look at it through the glass and study the coast on either side.
In the meantime, Jackson had set one of the sailors to work
That, thought Ramage, sums it up fairly neatly. And now after eight years he was about to return to this beautiful, lazy, flamboyant country, which was so full of contradictions that only an insensitive fool could say with any certainty that he loved or hated it, or any stage in between.
‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir: you speak the lingo, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
Heavens, the men either trusted him so much they felt they could ask questions without getting a savage snub, or they were taking advantage of him, ‘being familiar’, as some officers called it. But their interest was genuine enough.
‘How’s that, sir?’ asked the same nasal voice.
Why not tell them? They’d all stopped talking to hear his reply, and for the next couple of days he needed every ounce of trust they’d give him.
‘Well, when my father sailed in ’77 to command the American Station – when your people showed signs of wanting to be independent,’ he said jokingly to Jackson, ‘my mother came out to Italy to stay with various friends: she loved travelling – she still does, for that matter. I was two years old. I had an Italian nurse and began to speak Italian almost as soon as I did English.
‘We went back to England in ’82 when I was seven. Most of you know the reason… In ’83, after my father’s trial, he decided to leave England for a few years, and we came back to Italy. So I was out here again from the time I was eight until just before I was thirteen, when we returned to England and I first went to sea.’
‘That was when the press caught you, was it, sir?’
The rest of them roared with laughter at the blood-stained man’s joke. A good half of the men had been hauled in by press gangs and brought on board one or other of the King’s ships, where they were given the chance to ‘volunteer’, which meant they received a bounty of a few shillings, and had ‘vol’ instead of ‘prest’ written against their names in the muster book.
‘Yes,’ said Ramage, joining in the laughter, ‘but I took the bounty.’
The men had rested enough and he gave the orders for them to start rowing again. Ahead, lying low in the water like a sea monster, was the flat-topped islet of Giannutri. Although the chart did not give much detail, the nearest point to the mainland, Punta Secca, had a scattering of inlets just south of it. But the name, Dry Point, did not hold out much hope of finding drinking water.
Ramage ran his fingers through his hair and winced as they caught in clotted blood at the back of his scalp. He had forgotten about the cut. At least it had dried up quickly. At Giannutri, he thought to himself, he would have to do something towards tidying himself: at the moment he must look more like a highwayman than a naval officer.
Chapter Five
Jackson watched as the upper rim of the sun finally dropped below the low hills of Giannutri and spread a welcome cool shadow across the eastern side of the island. He glanced at the watch: another half an hour before his spell as lookout ended and he had to wake Mr Ramage.
They had been lucky in finding this little inlet, which was cut out of the rock as neatly as if someone had sliced it with a knife. The boat was almost invisible to a man standing on the shore five yards away, whereas the sides of the inlet, only a few inches higher than the gunwale of the boat, meant they could keep a lookout all round them.
For much of the morning Mr Ramage had been sitting on the side of the hill, glass to his eye, studying the mainland. As soon as he had located the Tower of Buranaccio, just at the back of the beach, its base hidden by the sand dunes and the curvature of the earth, he had ordered all the seamen to be brought up, two at a time, to look at it through the glass and study the coast on either side.
In the meantime, Jackson had set one of the sailors to work
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