Read Online The Ramage Touch by Dudley Pope - Free Book Online

sailing.’
    ‘Crete is larger than Corsica,’ Ramage said casually. ‘A squadron of cavalry, a few field guns and two bomb ketches are not going to make much impression. You’ll probably meet a fleet there and go on somewhere else. Back to Egypt, perhaps…’
    Renouf looked alarmed at the mention of Egypt. The defeat of the French fleet there – Nelson had captured or burned eleven ships of the line out of thirteen – and Bonaparte’s narrow escape (at a cost of abandoning his Army of Egypt to its fate) was still fresh in every Frenchman’s memory, and the prospect that the Dix-Huit de Fructidor and the Brutus might be part of a new plan by Bonaparte to return to those scorching sands (even though the Royal Navy had quit the Mediter-ranean) did not appeal to him. Then, he composed his face – it was an expression Ramage had often read in books, but he had never previously seen someone actually doing it. Clearly Renouf had suddenly realized the danger of letting a senior officer glimpse his feelings: charges of treason made as the result of a look, let alone a careless word, had led to a man making the short walk to the guillotine or the long voyage across the Atlantic to Devil’s Island, just a few miles north of the Equator. ‘The convoy to Cayenne’, meaning trans-portation, was as common an expression in France these days as ‘taking a ride in a tumbril’ and ‘marrying the Widow’ were for being guillotined.
    Renouf saw that his companion was nodding and smiling understandingly, so no harm had been done, but the mention of Egypt was enough to turn a man’s stomach. One could not trust such a fellow as this too far, however. He was from Paris, judging by his accent, or maybe from the Orléans area. Obviously once an aristo – Renouf could tell that from his voice. But he, or his family, must have done good work for the Revolution, or else paid a lot of money, to keep his head on his shoulders, and even more to have obtained and kept command of a ship like this frigate.
    Renouf admitted that the ship was in good order: he had seen enough while being rowed over, and the decks were spotless: he had noticed that in the brief walk from the entry port to the companionway. As scrubbed as they always said English ships were!
    Still, the damned man might at least offer him a drink. His mouth tasted as coppery as a moneylender’s leather pouch. There was something he did not understand about this young man. He had the face of an aristo: high cheekbones, a slightly hooked nose, dark brown eyes very deepset under thick eyebrows. Not really a French face – but then what was a French face? Long and narrow with crinkly black hair and a boasting tongue like a Gascon? Leathery, the body wiry, like a man from one of the provinces along the Pyrenees? Or stocky, round-faced from too much eating, like those living close to the Swiss border, neither men of the mountains nor the plains? There was no really typical Frenchman, but nevertheless this capitaine de vaisseau looked different. Perhaps his mother was a foreigner.
    Renouf decided that the eyes were disconcerting: they seemed to look right through you. The two scars over the right eyebrow must be sword cuts – one newer than the other. He held his left arm as though the muscles were slightly wasted. He must be recovering from a wound. Renouf always warned his men that if you had a wound in a limb, you could say goodbye to it. At least this fellow had escaped the surgeon’s saw.
    This frigate, Renouf thought, was not one of the two that were supposed to meet him at Porto Ercole since the Captain knew nothing of his orders. Curious that there should be a third frigate in such a small area. Perhaps this fellow was trying to catch him out; trying to make a case against him for wasting time? No, there was no doubt about the Captain’s surprise when he read the second set of orders.
    Renouf was startled by a double knock at the door, which had been left open. He heard