Ramage & the Saracens Read online

  Selected Historical Fiction Published by McBooks Press

  BY ALEXANDER KENT

  The Complete Midshipman Bolitho

  Stand Into Danger

  In Gallant Company

  Sloop of War

  To Glory We Steer

  Command a King’s Ship

  Passage to Mutiny

  With All Despatch

  Form Line of Battle!

  Enemy in Sight!

  The Flag Captain

  Signal–Close Action!

  The Inshore Squadron

  A Tradition of Victory

  Success to the Brave

  Colours Aloft!

  Honour This Day

  The Only Victor

  Beyond the Reef

  The Darkening Sea

  For My Country’s Freedom

  Cross of St George

  Sword of Honour

  Second to None

  Relentless Pursuit

  Man of War

  Heart of Oak

  BY PHILIP MCCUTCHAN

  Halfhyde’s Island

  Halfhyde and the Guns of Arrest

  Halfhyde to the Narrows

  Halfhyde for the Queen

  Halfhyde Ordered South

  Halfhyde on Zanatu

  BY JAN NEEDLE

  A Fine Boy for Killing

  The Wicked Trade

  The Spithead Nymph

  BY JAMES L. NELSON

  The Only Life That Mattered

  BY JAMES DUFFY

  Sand of the Arena

  The Fight for Rome

  BY DEWEY LAMBDIN

  The French Admiral

  The Gun Ketch

  HMS Cockerel

  A King’s Commander

  Jester’s Fortune

  BY DUDLEY POPE

  Ramage

  Ramage & The Drumbeat

  Ramage & The Freebooters

  Governor Ramage R.N.

  Ramage’s Prize

  Ramage & The Guillotine

  Ramage’s Diamond

  Ramage’s Mutiny

  Ramage & The Rebels

  The Ramage Touch

  Ramage’s Signal

  Ramage & The Renegades

  Ramage’s Devil

  Ramage’s Trial

  Ramage’s Challenge

  Ramage at Trafalgar

  Ramage & The Saracens

  Ramage & The Dido

  BY FREDERICK MARRYAT

  Frank Mildmay or The Naval Officer

  Mr Midshipman Easy

  BY V.A. STUART

  Victors and Lords

  The Sepoy Mutiny

  Massacre at Cawnpore

  The Cannons of Lucknow

  The Heroic Garrison

  The Valiant Sailors

  The Brave Captains

  Hazard’s Command

  Hazard of Huntress

  Hazard in Circassia

  Victory at Sebastopol

  Guns to the Far

  East Escape from Hell

  BY DOUGLAS W. JACOBSON

  Night of Flames

  BY SETH HUNTER

  The Time of Terror

  BY JULIAN STOCKWIN

  Kydd

  Artemis

  Seaflower

  Mutiny

  Quarterdeck

  Tenacious

  Command

  The Admiral’s Daughter

  The Privateer’s Revenge

  Invasion

  BY JOHN BIGGINS

  A Sailor of Austria

  The Emperor’s Coloured Coat

  The Two-Headed Eagle

  Tomorrow the World

  BY ALEXANDER FULLERTON

  Storm Force to Narvik

  Last Lift from Crete

  All the Drowning Seas

  A Share of Honour

  The Torch Bearers

  The Gatecrashers

  BY C.N. PARKINSON

  The Guernseyman

  Devil to Pay

  The Fireship

  Touch and Go

  So Near So Far

  Dead Reckoning

  BY DOUGLAS REEMAN

  Badge of Glory

  First to Land

  Dust on the Sea

  Knife Edge

  BY DAVID DONACHIE

  The Devil’s Own Luck

  The Dying Trade

  A Hanging Matter

  The Scent of Betrayal

  A Game of Bones

  BY BROOS CAMPBELL

  No Quarter

  The War of Knives

  Peter Wicked

  Published by McBooks Press 2002

  Copyright © 1988 by Dudley Pope

  First published in the United Kingdom by The Alison Press/Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1988

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

  Cover painting by Paul Wright.

  The paperback edition of this title was cataloged as: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pope, Dudley.

  [Ramage and the Saracens]

  Ramage & the Saracens / by Dudley Pope.

  p. cm.—(The Lord Ramage novels ; no. 17) Originally published as Ramage and the Saracens.

  ISBN 1-59013-023-5 (alk. paper)

  1. Ramage, Nicholas (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History, Naval—19th century—Fiction. 3. Great Britain. Royal Navy—Officers—Fiction. 4. Sicily (Italy)—Fiction. 5. Ship captains—Fiction. 6. Pirates—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6066.O5 R294 2002

  823’.914—dc21

  2002010208

  The e-book versions of this title have the following ISBNs: Kindle 978-1-59013-534-1, ePub 978-1-59013-535-8, and PDF 978-1-59013-0536-5

  www.mcbooks.com

  For Kay Again with Love

  A U T H O R ‘ S N O T E

  With the exception of Sidi Rezegh, all the places mentioned in this narrative actually exist and are described as they would have been in 1806.

  DUDLEY POPE

  St Martin

  French West Indies

  CHAPTER ONE

  SOUTHWICK counted the pieces of salt beef as the cook’s mate lifted them out of the cask, banging each piece before he removed it to shake off the encrusted salt. Each piece of meat was as dark as old varnish and the salt was stained like muddy sand.

  It would take many hours of soaking in fresh water in the steep tub to dissolve that hardened salt, the master thought to himself, and a lot of boiling afterwards before the men could get their teeth into the meat.

  This cask was full of old meat: from the look of it many months had passed—even a year or more—since the carcass had been cut up in the contractor’s slaughterhouse and salted down in the cask. Still, it was not as bad as some he had seen in the old days, before the Great Mutiny had led to an improvement. Then it was not unusual to find meat so hard it could be carved, looking rather like mahogany.

  He continued marking the slate and looked at the side of the cask on which was stencilled the legend “54 pieces.” Well, it might contain fifty-four pieces; it was not entirely unknown for the number of pieces to match what the contractor had painted on the outside, but it was rare, and the discrepancy was always on the side of the contractor.

  Southwick, like every other master in the king’s service doing this particular job, had to note the difference in his log, and as the cook’s mate finally lifted out the last piece and Southwick looked at the tally on the slate, he could see they were fortunate: the log entry would simply say: �
�Opened cask of beef, marked 54 pieces, contained 52.”

  In theory the Navy Board claimed back from the contractor the value of the difference, but Southwick wondered if they ever did.

  The seamen were cheated by the dishonest contractors, not the Navy Board: the clerks at the Navy Board had their dinner whether or not a cask was missing several pieces of meat. It was only the seamen who went without: a ship was issued with so many casks of salt beef and salt pork for a commission or voyage, and that was that: the men just had to make it last.

  With the last piece taken from the cask, Southwick said: “Very well, get all this into the steep tub,” gesturing at the pile of meat, most of which seemed to him to be fat or bone, and he turned to go below to make the entry in his log.

  Captain Ramage, standing at the forward end of the quarterdeck, asked: “Short again?”

  “Only two pieces, sir,” Southwick said, adding gloomily: “The Navy Board seems to have been getting rid of some old stock: looked more like off-cuts of mahogany from the carpenter’s shop than salt beef.”

  Ramage nodded and noted that they were lucky: it was usual for there to be half a dozen pieces missing, or even more, and much of the meat comprised chunks of fat which, when the meat was put in the coppers to cook, would float on top of the boiling water, to be skimmed off by the cook’s mate and sold illicitly to the men as “slush,” providing something to spread on their hard biscuits and giving the cook’s mate the nickname of “Slushy.” Did the cook demand his share of the proceeds?

  Ramage shrugged his shoulders and found he did not care: it was a fine day with a brisk wind, just enough to raise a few white horses and the Mediterranean was unbelievably blue, as though welcoming back the Calypso after the spell in the Atlantic.

  How many times had he passed through the Strait of Gibraltar up to now? A score of times? Anyway, Europa Point was a familiar enough landmark, and now the men would be commenting on being “Black Strapped,” their description of being in the Mediterranean and deriving either from Black Strap Bay, on the eastern side of Gibraltar, or from the coarse Spanish red wine which would soon take the place of their rum issue, and which was not very popular.

  The Calypso stretched along under all working sail, pitching slightly in the head sea, as though curtsying. Each pitch brought a slight groan from masts and yards, as though they were protesting; every now and again the sails slatted as an unusual wave made the ship pitch more than usual, spilling the wind momentarily and then letting the sails fill again with a bang.

  A sudden shout of “Deck there!” from the foremasthead sent the red-headed second lieutenant, Kenton, lunging for the speaking-trumpet and shouting up an acknowledgement.

  “Sail two points on the larboard bow, sir!” shouted down the lookout.

  Kenton turned to Ramage, to make sure he had heard.

  Ramage nodded. “How far off?”

  Kenton’s hail brought the answer of eight or ten miles.

  Without bothering about a cast of the log, Ramage estimated the Calypso was making about seven knots. He took out his watch. It would soon be noon. “Pass the word to Mr Aitken not to secure the guns,” he said. For the past hour the men had been busy at gunnery practice: without actually firing, they had been loading, running out, and pretending to fire the guns, the sharp cries and the rumbling of the trucks punctuating the lazy noise of the Calypso’s progress.

  A sail in sight: in this position and at this time it was routine: probably another frigate bound for Gibraltar from Malta or Naples, or even an Algerine: they sneaked out of the Barbary Coast ports to see what they could pick up—just pirates. The chance of the sail being French was slight: they were still licking their wounds after Trafalgar. He corrected himself: at Trafalgar they had lost many ships of the line, not frigates, so in theory the sail in sight ahead could be a French frigate, but it was not likely. The defeat of the French at Trafalgar had been a blow to their confidence as much as to the total number of ships they had: it would probably be many months before they ventured to sea again.

  “Deck there, fore-topmast here: there are two sail!”

  Kenton answered the hail and Ramage thought: two sail meant even less chance of them being French. But soon the men would be sent to quarters, because in wartime every sail had to be treated as potentially an enemy, to be met with guns run out and a hoist of flags challenging her to reveal her identity.

  Ramage realized that he could not remember the secret signal for the day and went below to his cabin, unlocking a drawer in his desk to look it up.

  The secret signal comprised a table lasting three months which set out the challenge and the correct reply for each day. The table was issued by the commander-in-chief and applied only to the area he commanded. It was without doubt the most secret thing on board the ship: the penalty for allowing it to fall into enemy hands was a court martial to begin with, and no captain of a ship could expect any mercy from the court: that was made more than clear in the preamble to the signals.

  The secret signal and the ship’s number in the List of the Navy—they were the flags to be hoisted as soon as a strange ship was close enough to distinguish them. Unless one recognized the other ship it was always a slightly tense moment: from the very first day when one went to sea as a midshipman, one was brought up to consider every strange sail as potentially an enemy. And for most of the years since then at least half the time it usually was. He put the signals away and went back on deck.

  Southwick came up the quarterdeck ladder. “A couple of sail, eh? Getting like Spithead round here!”

  “Probably a couple of frigates bound for Gibraltar,” Ramage said. “Or even a couple of our merchantmen with olive oil and wine.”

  “Could be,” Southwick agreed. “It’s safe enough now for them to risk sailing without a convoy.”

  No convoys, no escorts, Southwick thought. Escorting convoys was the dreariest job that could be given to a frigate, and it was a sign of the times that the Calypso had been sent out to the Mediterranean alone: until quite recently, almost any frigate bound for the Mediterranean from England would have to escort merchant ships; there were usually enough of them waiting to sail to make up a convoy, even if only comprising half a dozen ships. Yet, Southwick reflected, it did not matter whether there were half a dozen or the hundred more usual to or from the West Indies, there was always at least one ship that was a veritable mule, always reducing sail at night and falling behind, no matter what threats were made.

  Ramage picked up his telescope and looked at the two tiny specks now coming into sight over the curvature of the earth. He calculated they were not on an opposing course, which was strange: they should be steering the reciprocal of the Calypso’s course if they were bound for Gibraltar, since she had left there not long since. No, the two ships were steering more to the northwest: that much was clear from the line of their masts. Perhaps they had a different slant of wind over there, though that would not account for the course they were steering, only the trim of their sails.

  Their course, he thought idly, seemed too far to the northwest for any ship not bound for Toulon! But there could be several explanations—they could be British frigates investigating a strange sail out of sight from the Calypso. But even as he watched, both ships began to alter course, coming round to larboard so that they would meet the Calypso.

  “Pass the word for Orsini,” Ramage told Kenton, “and then send him aloft with a bring-’em-near: I’m beginning to doubt if those two are frigates.”

  Ships of the line usually meant problems: either one of them carried an admiral who wanted to give fresh orders, or the senior of the two captains had some task to be carried out. Well, Ramage thought grimly, he was sailing under Admiralty orders, which should make him proof against being humbugged about by any passing senior officers.

  He watched Orsini arrive on the quarterdeck, collect a telescope and jump up into the ratlines in a smooth scramble aloft. If Gianna could see her nephew now, he mused. That was a big
“if,” since it was by no means certain that she was still alive.

  How the years passed. In many ways it seemed no time ago that he had rescued the young and vulnerable Marchesa di Volterra from the beaches of Tuscany, snatching her (with the help of the seaman Jackson) from under the feet of Napoleon’s cavalry. It seemed no time at all that he had fallen in love with her (thought he had fallen in love with her, he corrected himself) and back in England the refugee marchesa had gone to live with his parents. And then later her nephew had escaped from Volterra, a lively lad who had wanted to join the Navy and, at Gianna’s request, Paolo Orsini had come to the Calypso as a midshipman and quickly learned seamanship and become a popular young officer.

  And then … and then had come the peace following the Treaty of Amiens, and Gianna had decided that she must return to her kingdom of Volterra. His father and he had argued with her, warning her that she would be at risk from Napoleon’s assassins, and that the peace would not last. But she would not listen and she had left London for Paris, on her way to Italy. They had heard nothing more of her, and in the meantime Ramage had met and married Sarah, now his wife. Gianna was an ever-fading memory, jogged into existence again whenever he looked at Paolo and remembered. As he had just done. But memories of Gianna were fading, of that there was no doubt; he had difficulty in recalling the details of her face; all that remained was a picture of her personality: lively, at times imperious, warm yet hot-tempered, but for all that very much the ruler of the kingdom of Volterra which, small on the map, yet loomed large in the life of the young girl who—until Napoleon’s Army of Italy drove her out—was its sole ruler.

  He put the telescope back to his eye. What a long string of memories had been called up by watching Paolo climbing the rigging. How different was Sarah, the wife he had left in England.

  It was strange how the Calypso’s ship’s company knew both women so well. Gianna because many of them had helped rescue her and been on board the ship that took her back to England; and Sarah for a similar reason, only this time the rescue had been from an island off the coast of Brazil.

  Yes, those two sail had hauled their wind to meet him, and he was sure they were not frigates: more like ships of the line. A couple of ships making their way from Naples to Gibraltar—or through the Gut on their way to England—would be nothing out of the ordinary; in fact it would be a commonplace, a one-line entry in his journal, merely noting the date, time and names of the ships.