Ramage At Trafalgar by Dudley Pope Read Free Book Online Page A

she now had piano lessons and was nearly five years old) and then said apologetically to Sarah: “I am taking your husband to the next room for a few minutes’ chat: once we’ve got that out of the way we can enjoy ourselves!”
    What had Nicholas done? Yet the admiral seemed friendly enough. Nicholas had not served under Nelson for several years. She shrugged and then was embarrassed to find that Lady Hamilton had noticed. Would she misinterpret it?
    As Ramage turned to follow Nelson from the room, Lady Hamilton said: “The life I lead! My late husband Sir William, when we were at the Embassy in Naples, was forever breaking up conversations by taking away husbands for discreet talks…His Lordship, by the way, thinks highly of your husband.”
    “I’m very glad,” Sarah said, “but Nicholas has not served with him for several years.”
    “Ah, no, but His Lordship has read all the Gazette letters: he has them among his papers. In fact he was reading the one about how your husband rescued all the hostages – and you ! – in Italy, and concluded by reading it aloud to Horatia and me. It was enthralling! Fancy finding you, when he thought you were dead! Dead,” she repeated, the word obviously reminding her of some incident. “I worry about His Lordship. Do you know, he has been wounded more than twenty times? He lost the arm at Tenerife, the eye in Corsica. At the Nile a splinter nearly knocked his head off and cut his forehead. I think that last battle, Copenhagen, was a miracle: all those dead, and Horatio for once not even scratched!”
     
    Nelson had taken Ramage to the next room, which he obviously used as a study. He gestured to Ramage to sit in a leather-covered armchair beside the unlit fire, and sat in the opposite one. He adjusted his eyeshade – Ramage noticed he had chosen the chair with its back to the window, so that he did not face the light – and said: “Well, you’ve had a busy few years since I last saw you!”
    “And you, sir,” Ramage said with a grin. “I am jealous that I was not with you at Aboukir Bay and Copenhagen.”
    “Ah yes, interesting actions. Hard pounding, against the Danes. It was touch and go. The Danes and the Dutch – we need parity when we fight ’em, unless we use better tactics.”
    “Tell me, sir,” Ramage asked, “did the success of your tactics at the Nile influence you at Copenhagen?”
    Nelson laughed and slapped his knee. “You know, young Ramage, it’s a strange thing: few people have ever noticed that. The Danes had their ships drawn up outside their capital city just as the French had their fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay – so close to the shore they were sure no ship could get inside them. But the French were wrong, so I won.
    “Still, I was sure the Danes would have studied that battle, so when I saw their ships drawn up in a long line outside Copenhagen, I wondered. Had they, I asked myself, really anchored so there was no room between them and the shore or – and this was my sharpest worry – had they found some answer, in case I did intend to use similar tactics, and had set a trap for me?”
    “But,” Ramage said, “the Danes didn’t seem to have learned any lessons from the Battle of the Nile!”
    “No. I talked later to the Danish Crown Prince and to their admiral, Olfert Fischer, and I had the impression they regarded the Nile as a far distant place… They didn’t seem to understand that tactics apply anywhere, from the Equator to the Arctic. Still, I am more interested in you. That must have been a pleasant shock when you found you had rescued your wife! Tell me, did you think she was already dead?”
    Ramage paused, briefly, reliving those long months of not knowing whether the ship taking Sarah to England had been sunk in a storm or captured by French privateers – or even a French national ship. “Yes, sir, I must admit that secretly I thought she was dead. I don’t believe in miracles, and it seemed only a miracle could