Southwick and Aitken had watched the action through their telescopes and seen Ramage momentarily draped over the muzzle of the carronade and knew it must be on the verge of firing. The master hid his feelings with the comment to Ramage that Then I remembered you were wearing your oldest uniform and had left behind the new sword the Marchesa gave you, so only the pistols would be lost' For a moment Aitken had been shocked, then he had seen Ramage's grin and had joined in with: 'Aye, I thought for a minute or two I'd be moving up a deck. I find my present cabin both small and hot in this weather .. .'
Then, with Southwick's assurance that he had no wish to spend the evening on shore and Bowen declaring he would not leave his patients, Ramage and his officers went below to prepare themselves for dinner with the Governor. Ramage was worn out, but he could think of no possible excuse to avoid at least an hour or two at Government House. After going below to chat with the wounded men - and finding them cheerful but chagrined, complaining bitterly that before they could 'get a swing' at the French they found themselves swimming - he went to his cabin, let Silkin pull off his boots (Kenton's vow about shoes made sense: apart from anything else the hot decks and walking had swollen his feet so much that pulling off his boots needed as much effort - or so it seemed - as pulling off his feet), and then sat back for ten minutes, trying to relax.
Relaxing, everyone told him, was a very fine thing. Relax for ten minutes, banish all worrisome thoughts from your head, and at the end of it you were as refreshed as a flower garden after a summer shower. It probably worked for some people but it depended on relaxing in the first place. If you could not relax, then you felt (and probably looked) like a flower garden after a long drought His feet throbbed as though someone was pounding them with dubs; his eyes were sore from the day's scorching sun; his hands were not visibly trembling but like his knees they gave that impression. If he tried to rest his mind for a moment - the first stage, as it were, to relaxing - he felt the muzzle of that carronade pressing against his belly, the iron barrel warm to his hands from the heat of the sun, and hunched there, unbalanced and frightened, he could smell the garlic, the Stockholm tar, the bilges and the sheer stink of unwashed French seamen. Then once again he heard, almost felt, mat sharp metallic click of the gun's second captain cocking the lock, and he could see the gun captain's eyes staring at him, startled and momentarily paralysed by his sudden appearance at the port. The bloodshot eyes were close together, and seemed slightly out of focus, and afterwards he had noticed that the corpse reeked of wine. Drink had slowed the Frenchman's reactions by - well, perhaps only a couple of seconds, but just long enough for Ramage to cock and fire his pistol; one of the two pistols given him by Gianna and which she had thought plain, preferring a far more ornate pair.
Well, he had not been blown in half by an enemy carronade; young Kenton had not had his head knocked off by the 6 - pounder shot that smashed up the cutter. There was, therefore, no more point in thinking about it. Think instead of - well, the privateers were captured, which would please old Foxey - Foote. The Admiral's orders did not actually say the privateers in Curacao were to be captured; from memory the orders were in fact rather vague about what was to be done. Anyway, all ten of them were captured and could be sunk, burned1'or blown up if necessary in minutes.
The French prisoners had sworn that those ten were the only ones using the Dutch islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire as a temporary base, so any new arrivals would be ships that came in by chance. Ramage had been interested to discover that they had not been expecting La Perle, so her captain's story was probably true.
Suddenly he sat upright in the chair, then stood up and went over to his desk, unlocking a drawer and taking out his orders from Admiral Foxe-Foote. Yes, they were vague about exactly what he was to do about the privateers based on Curacao, but they were quite clear on one point which had just occurred to him with the suddenness of a sword thrust: as soon as he had dealt with them he was to return to Port Royal. So, if Foxey - Foote was liverish when the Calypso finally returned, he could sermonize and wax wrathful because Ramage had paused to take the surrender of an island. Islands, after all, yielded no prize money, nothing from which a commander-in-chief could take his eighths. Ten privateers, on the other hand, undamaged and requiring only the sails hoisting up from below and bending on ...
Maria van Someren. He put his orders back in the drawer and turned the key, and then returned to the armchair. There was nothing restful about Maria van Someren. She was no blushing young girl overcome with the vapours if she saw a naval officer casting an eye over her body, nor was she one of those brazen young women who made up for dull and vacant minds and vapid personalities by wearing daringly cut dresses out of which a reasonable man could expect a bosom to pop any moment and which, temporarily, took his mind off the mental drabness of the owner.
No, like Gianna she preferred the company of men to being caught up in a crowd of women chattering about the merits of a newly - discovered dressmaker, hinting at the behaviour of some absent wife (or her husband) or (with a brisk flapping of fans) remarking how hot it was for the time of year. Or, Ramage suddenly realized, he assumed she did: he had seen her once for a few minutes, and already he thought he knew her. Instead, of course, he was creating a person in the image of the kind of woman he bleed. He had seen her once, he would see her again this evening, and then it was unlikely he would ever see her again. The disappointment was physical rather than mental; he felt it in his loins. He would see Gianna naked, hold her body closely, share her bed - at least, he could have reasonable hopes of all that - but he would always wonder about Maria van Someren: was she one of those women who clasped her hands across her breasts, shut her eyes, breathed shallowly and went rigid, like a day - old corpse? Or was she - well, his mind was in enough turmoil to stop speculating further.
Many a man had metaphorically or literally lost his head because of the curve of a bosom but, he asked himself, have we anything to lose by dining at Government House tonight? The Calypso was safe enough; Southwick was quite capable of turning her on the springs and firing into the town - and likewise dealing with the unlikely prospect of a ship unexpectedly sailing in after dark. The privateers were safe enough under their Dutch guards - safe inasmuch as they could not fall into enemy hands. And since Ramage had to discuss the military situation with the Governor before doing anything about the rebels, the Calypso's officers might just as well be present and have a good dinner afterwards.
At the moment Ramage finally stood up from the armchair, Silkin knocked on the door and came into the cabin, freshly - ironed shirt, stock and stockings over his arm and polished shoes in his hand. Ramage, always irrationally irritated by Silkin's ability to keep out of sight until the moment he was wanted, began stripping off his clothes and walked through to his sleeping cabin where he knew the handbasin would be precisely two - thirds full of water, with soap, shaving brush, razor freshly stropped, and towel neatly laid out.
Relax indeed! Those captains who were court - martialled for 'not doing their utmost' against the enemy, admirals criticized after a battle for not pursuing a beaten enemy, junior officers not promoted because they lacked initiative - they were the men who could and did relax.
He soaped his body and then rinsed it He twirled the shaving brush in the soap dish and lathered his face. He paused and rubbed the lather deeper into the skin with his fingers before resuming with the brush. Finally he picked up the razor. He had no need to test the blade; Silkin was not intelligent enough to do something wrong, like forget to put out the shaving brush, or not hone the razor, so that the captain could spend a couple of minutes being angry, and then brighten up for the rest of the day. Instead, with nothing to grumble at, he became angry with himself for being so ill - tempered, and this discontent sometimes lasted for hours. If the ship's company understood all this, Ramage thought to himself, they'd cut Silkin's throat and feed him in small pieces to the gulls.