Ramage's Trial by Dudley Pope Page B

already grooved from previous years. Carpenters could plane and seamen scrub with holystones, but the marks were there, like cart tracks on a country lane, and a couple of hours’ shooting worked the soot and rust powder well into the grain so that it looked like a chimney sweep’s neck. Anyway, that was the problem for L’Espoir’ s new captain: Ramage’s only concern was that he carried out gunnery exercises.
    Summers, commanding La Robuste , was a completely different man: where Mead was lively and talkative, full of ideas which Ramage noticed he sometimes expressed without sufficient thought, Summers was dour; he gave the impression of never speaking a word (expelling it, almost) without chewing it ten or twenty times. It was not the hesitation preceding deep thought, of that Ramage was sure; the dourness came from a brain which turned over slowly, like a roasting pig revolving on a spit. Would Summers be as slow in reacting to an emergency – when a privateer rushed out of the darkness to cut off one of the convoy? Why had the admiral put Summers in command of La Robuste ? If he had been an unsatisfactory first lieutenant in one of Tewtin’s ships, it was of course a convenient way of getting rid of him. It wasted an opportunity to promote a favourite, but there must be times for flag officers when the need to get rid of a really incompetent (or irritating) subordinate overcame the demands of favouritism.
    Summers, then, was the question mark; the convoy was sufficiently large and the escort of three frigates (one, L’Espoir , armed en flûte , so that virtually she carried no guns) was pathetically small: it averaged out at twenty-four merchant ships for each frigate. The escort was just large enough for Tewtin to avoid criticism from the Admiralty – unless it was heavily attacked and suffered disastrous losses. In that case Tewtin would probably be agile enough to make sure all the blame rested on the shoulders of the convoy commander…after all, admirals could not be everywhere, and had to rely on subordinates…
    Still, it was a beautiful evening and Barbados was drawing astern on the starboard quarter, or rather the Calypso and the convoy appeared to be stationary on the sea, like small ornaments on a polished table, while the island itself seemed to be moving slowly away, distance softening the low outlines and turning the pale greys into misty and distant blues that would challenge a water-colourist.
    What was Sidney Yorke (and his sister Alexis, for that matter) thinking about as they passed this northwestern coast of Barbados? It was out here, in the time of Cromwell, that one of Yorke’s Royalist forebears had to escape from the island just a few yards ahead of the Roundheads and, according to Sidney, taking with him a French mistress, wife of some besotted Roundhead planter. He must ask Yorke to tell the story of that particular forebear, because he ended up in Jamaica as the leader of the Buccaneers, and the estates he then acquired now belonged to the Yorkes, though Ramage was far from sure that it was Sidney Yorke’s branch of the family. It must be strange, though, looking across at an island and knowing that one and a half centuries ago, or whenever it was, all that parcel of land belonged to your family and, but for Cromwell’s antics, would now belong to you.
    Ramage realized that Southwick was standing nearby, obviously anxious to say something but unwilling to interrupt. Southwick always knew when he was away in another country and often another century.
    â€œAh, Southwick, this is probably the last time we’ll ever see these mules in such good order!”
    Southwick laughed and dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “I was watching those masters at the conference: that question you put Mr Yorke up to asking had an effect! You looked so fierce that every one of them could see the Calypso towing them under. Worth five dozen warning