'That would be the best way, sir: I don't want to hang about for a court martial, but I do want to get rid of this fellow.'
Rossiter gestured at the letter Ramage was holding. 'Why don't you read your orders?'
Ramage broke the seal and opened the single sheet of paper. The orders were brief and simple: after provisioning for six months and completing the fitting out of his ship to the satisfaction of the port admiral, Ramage was to sail to the West Indies, placing himself under the command of Rear-Admiral Samuel Cameron, the Commander-in-Chief of the Windward Islands Station at Barbados. Ramage managed to avoid giving a sigh of relief: he had not been told to escort a convoy, the dreariest task he could think of.
'Well?' asked Rossiter. 'To your liking?'
'Barbados, sir. I always like going back to the West Indies.'
'Yes, nothing wrong with the place, as long as you avoid yellow fever, malaria and blackwater . . . You've been lucky so far, if my memory serves me. I seem to remember various Gazette letters from there.'
'Indeed, I've been lucky,' Ramage admitted. 'Both in dodging disease and finding action.'
'Very well,' the admiral said briskly. 'I take it you don't want to go ahead and bring this fellow to trial as long as I can replace him?'
'No, sir. I'm very grateful to you.'
Rossiter tore up the letter he was still holding. 'By the way, you can sleep on shore for another couple of days. Then you'll be ready to take on powder and sail.'
Ramage arrived on board the Dido next morning with Sarah, and was pleased to find that there were three carts alongside the ship and seamen were already busy carefully hoisting on board his furniture, using the stay tackle. The dining table, desk and drawers were packed in straw, which had been tied round the polished woodwork to protect it. The chairs looked as though they were growing out of a cornfield.
Sarah commented on the care that the shop had taken, and Ramage said: 'Wait until the crockery and cutlery arrives. It's another shop, and they may not have dealt with a ship before.'
They went to the cabin and a few minutes later sailors arrived carrying the table, having cut off the straw on deck. Ramage indicated where he wanted it put just as more men arrived with chairs. Within a quarter of an hour the rest of the furniture had been carried down and put in its place, and Ramage sat in one of the armchairs. 'Comfortable enough,' he told Sarah. 'You made a good choice.'
'The owner of the shop wasn't used to having ladies come in and choose this sort of furniture. He was most concerned when he heard you commanded the Dido, and promised to change anything you did not like.' Sarah laughed and added: 'I told him that you would like anything I chose - and he was most impressed. At least, I think he was. He may not have believed a word I said!'
The contrast between the pieces of furniture and the two 12-pounders was dramatic. The two barrels of the guns, which seemed to be crouching on their carriages, black and shiny like serpents, were in stark contrast to the yellow and white covers that Sarah had chosen for the settee and armchairs.
Ramage had not been sitting down more than a few minutes before the carpenter arrived, asking permission to fit eyebolts to the deck and the underside of each piece of furniture, so that the light chairs could be attached to stop them sliding about the cabin when the Dido rolled in a seaway. Soon the cabin seemed to be full of the carpenter and his mates as they up-ended each piece of furniture and started drilling for the screws to hold the eyeplates. Finally they shackled on the chains and left.
CHAPTER SIX
Ramage opened his Journal and dipped his quill in the ink. The page was headed 'Journal of the Proceedings of his Majesty's ship ----, Captain —, Commander, between the ---- and the —'
He filled in 'Dido' and his own name, and the dates. There were nine columns, each with its own heading, which went from the date to 'Winds', 'Courses', 'Miles', the latitude the ship was in and the amount of longitude made, bearing and distances at noon (they were too far out to sea to give either) and the last column, which was headed 'Remarkable Observations and Accidents'.
He looked at the pencilled note that Southwick had given him and started filling in the columns. The wind had been north-east, the courses had been south and south-south-west, they had covered 120 miles since noon the previous day, the present latitude was 25° 7' North, they had stayed in the same longitude, and in the last column he wrote: 'Weather unsettled and sighted several waterspouts. Fore topgallant badly chafed, sent down and replaced. Exercised ship's company at great guns.'
And that, he thought as he wiped the quill and put the cap on the ink, was all there was to say for a day in which the Dido had ploughed on just approaching the Tropics with a wind that was fitful and a sky heavy with thunderstorms.
The entry did not tell anything of the Dido. It did not tell of Ramage's efforts to train the two hundred or so men that had been taken from the West India and Cape convoys just before she sailed. There was the core of the Calypsos, but there were the new men to be trained in the ways of the Navy. Most of them were good seamen - that was why incoming convoys yielded a good harvest for pressgangs - but they knew little or nothing about gunnery. Few masters of merchant ships bothered to give their men any gunnery training, and few merchant ships carried anything larger than a long 6-pounder.
So on most days since they left the Channel, the Didos had been exercising the guns: running in and running out the big 32-pounders and the 24-pounders, as well as the 12-pounders and the carronades. Every couple of days the men were switched from one calibre of gun to another, so that they soon had experience of them all; every third day the guns were actually fired, filling the ears with the thunder of the explosions and the ship with thick smoke.
The new men were learning quickly. Most of them had got over their resentment at being snatched into the King's service just when they were expecting to go home on well earned leave, and most were thankful to find that their new ship had a firm and fair captain whose only quirk, it seemed, was an obsession with gunnery. In general the new men were sensible enough to appreciate that in these early days the enemy was not a French ship of the line ranged up alongside them but the watches held in the hands of the lieutenants, which relentlessly timed their activities.
Ramage closed his Journal, put it in a drawer of his desk, and went outside for a stroll up and down his balcony. He was enjoying the balcony: it was somewhere that he could pace alone with his thoughts with the ship's wake gurgling away below him and with just the creak of gudgeons and pintles as the rudder was turned by the men at the wheel.
What a rush those last few days in Portsmouth had turned out to be. Apart from getting the extra men - the ship had finally sailed with a complement of 602, twenty-three short of her establishment - it was found that a good deal of the water was bad, so much had to be emptied out and pumped over the side and fresh brought from the dockyard. And at the last moment, thanks to his strong complaints, the dockyard had produced a spare suit of sails, and these had to be struck below to the sail room a matter of hours before they sailed to get the powder on board.
Sarah had finally left - tearfully - for London with Jessop driving the carriage, and Ramage was grateful to Admiral Rossiter for leaving them alone until the last minute. Sarah had finally admitted that she could not bear standing on Portsmouth Point watching the Dido disappear in the distance, so she had driven off as the Dido left the Camber to take on powder.