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

time, and of course a captain was always in command of his ship, unless he was away on leave or official business. Because they had left Brest four months ago, Michelet must have been drunk one hundred and twenty times, if not more, because anniversaries of great victories, birthdays and even landfalls were good enough reasons for him to have extra celebrations. The worst of it was he forced some of his officers and petty officers to join him. One petty officer who came from Caen (which, being the centre of Calvados, meant the man was hardly a stranger to liquor) had finally gone off his head, leaping over the side one night screaming that the guns had broken loose and were running after him. That had been hushed up and described in the log as an accident in which the petty officer had been killed by a fall down a hatchway.
    ‘I don’t know, sir – I’ve never been on board his ship.’
    ‘But you are his senior officer; the two ketches form a squadron.’
    ‘Yes, Citizen, but…’ he could not think of a ‘but’ and realized that Michelet’s head was drooping; his chin was resting on his chest and he was dribbling, his whole body shaken every minute or two by a prodigious hiccup.
    There was no point in trying to save Michelet now; anyone who was not only fool enough to come on board a senior officer’s ship drunk but then allowed himself to fall asleep (or drop into a drunken stupor) while being questioned deserved whatever punishment came his way. But in all honesty it might have been me, Renouf thought.
    Now the Captain was looking at Renouf as though he could read his thoughts and it was like staring at the muzzles of two cannon. That fool Michelet had scuttled the pair of them. If the Captain started questioning Fructidor ’s men about their commanding officer there were two or three who would be only too willing to exaggerate and say Renouf drank too much, just because he had flogged them a few times. No doubt the same went for Michelet.
    ‘Neither of you will be drinking wine again for a long time…’
    He will have to court-martial us, and no court has yet sentenced a man not to drink, Renouf thought.
    ‘…because of course you are now both prisoners of war.’
    What was that? Renouf repeated the sentence to himself. It had been spoken clearly enough. The accent was indeed Parisian – ‘because of course you are now both prisoners of war’.
    ‘ Prisoners , Citizen? How can we be prisoners ?’
    ‘This is a British ship of war.’
    A joke! Not a very good one, but now was the time to laugh, and he had to laugh for Michelet as well. The Captain was not laughing. Not even smiling. In fact he looked serious and might even be sneering.
    Now he was calling an order. Was it in English? Mon Dieu , it sounded like it! Renouf had heard English spoken by fishermen before the war. Through the door came the sentry, holding a cutlass and a pistol. Not a French design of pistol. And the man was gesturing that he should go to the door.
    ‘This man is going to take you up on deck so that you can see this ship is flying British colours…’
    ‘But, Citizen…Citizen, she is a French frigate! I recognize the class!’
    ‘She was , until the British captured her in the West Indies. She is now the Calypso , one of His Britannic Majesty’s frigates,’
    ‘But…but…I can’t believe it!’
    ‘I commanded the ship that captured her, but just go up on deck with this Marine sentry. If you don’t believe the evidence of our colours, you are free to speak to any man you see.’
    Renouf heard the Captain give a quick order to the man, who took him by the arm after stuffing the pistol back in his belt, and led him out through the door and up the companionway. On deck the sun was just warming the planking and Renouf glanced aft, by now knowing what he would see. There were the British colours, the cloth barely moving in the early morning breeze. He looked across at each bomb ketch in turn and saw that they had not