Ramage by Dudley Pope Read Free Book Online Page B

who was a man with little intelligence or ability but full of corrosive jealousy. Marriage into the outer fringe of the royal family had, so far as promotion was concerned, made up for his other deficiencies.
    Since Goddard had so much influence with the crazy King – indeed, it was said he was one of the few men who could get any sense at all out of His Majesty during his not infrequent bouts of insanity – he had attracted a large following in the Navy when he became a rear-admiral: many captains – and flag officers – were prepared to sink their pride in order to provide Goddard with the sycophantic circle of admirers his pride required, receiving preferment and promotion in return.
    Unfortunately, Goddard was serving in the Mediterranean at the moment, although apparently neither the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir John Jervis, nor the third in command, Captain Horatio Nelson, had much time for him. Ramage was not sure, but suspected it was due only to Sir John Jervis’ influence that he was himself employed. But the fourth in seniority, Captain Croucher, was a close friend of Goddard’s. If he was president at the court martial trying him for the loss of the Sibella , Ramage thought, the verdict could be given even before the first witness was sworn in.

    Anyway, Ramage told himself, it’s time we were under way: the seamen have had enough rest. Those in authority can always put a subordinate in the wrong: that’s an indisputable fact and it’s no good brooding over it.

Chapter Four
     
    ‘Let me have the charts, Jackson.’ The American handed over the canvas bag, and Ramage selected one from the roll which covered the area from the Vada Rocks, off Livorno – or Leghorn as the British insisted on calling it – to Civita Vecchia. Before looking at it he glanced at the Master’s log and found it had been filled in up to six o’clock that evening, when the last entry gave a bearing and distance of the peak of Monte Argentario and the north end of the island of Giglio and added: ‘Enemy sail in sight to north-west.’
    Ramage unrolled the chart, folded it on his knee, and pulled the throwing knife from its sheath inside the top of his boot, using the blade to measure the distance from Monte Argentario at 6 p.m., taking it off the latitude scale at the side of the chart. He then twisted the knife round so he could use the blade to transfer the bearing from the compass rose.
    He then pricked a point on the chart. That was the 6 p.m. position of the Sibella . After estimating the course she’d steered and the distance covered until the French boarded, he pricked the chart once again. That was where she had sunk. Then he made a third mark – their present position, as accurately as guesswork based on experience could permit.
    Where did it put them? Roughly midway between the Argentario promontory and the island of Giglio. The channel between the two – he used the knife to measure it approximately – is twelve miles wide. So they were about six miles from Capo d’Uomo, the high cliff where one of Argentario’s mountainous ridges meets the sea.
    Ironic, he thought, that we’ve been rowing north-westward, away from Capalbio and the refugees, for the past half-hour.
    The chart showed that to reach the Tower at Capalbio they must first round the southern end of Argentario, which is almost an island joined to the mainland by two causeways. Odd how on the chart Argentario looked like a fat bat hanging upside down from a beam, with its two legs forming the causeways and the beam the mainland. The Tower is on the coast about five miles south of where the southern causeway meets the mainland, with the village of Capalbio on a hill five or six miles inland.
    Well, it’s more than fifteen miles, and without knowing the coast it will be impossible to find the Tower before daylight. That means we must hide somewhere before daylight. But where? The south-eastern side of Argentario is too risky: Port’ Ercole, just