Finally the Juno's decks were clean, the brasswork shone, ropes were coiled neatly, leather buckets were back on their hooks. The time had come to begin his inspection, accompanied by Aitken and Southwick, with young Benson following, armed with a pencil and notebook ready to write down any faults that Ramage might find. It took two hours, and by the time he had finished Ramage was hot and weary: below decks the heat was stifling, even though ventilators and wind sails were rigged. The ship was making six knots but the Trade winds were blowing at a little more than fifteen, giving a breeze of only nine knots across the deck: not enough to make a decent cooling draught through the ship.
Ramage had to admit that the general condition of the Juno was a credit to Aitken, even if not to the Portsmouth Dockyard. Paint bubbles on beams and planking had set Ramage digging with a knife that revealed patches of rot; many beams and some futtocks should have been doubled before the ship left Spithead for the West Indies. Benson scribbled hastily as Ramage made his comments, and Aitken had been shamefaced at some of them. Most of the axes stowed ready for wreck-clearing or any other emergency were not only blunt but had their blades pitted and scarred where at some time or other they had bitten into metal. More than half the tomahawks and cutlasses which would be wielded by a boarding party would not, as Ramage had commented acidly, have cut into a ripe paw-paw, and while the heads of boarding pikes were neatly black-enamelled most were so blunt they would hardly drive through a rip sail, let alone a thick-skinned Frenchman.
Finally, back on the quarterdeck, Ramage had taken Benson's notebook, glanced at it and given it back to the boy. 'Can you read your own writing?' he asked incredulously, and when the midshipman, his face crimson, said he could, Ramage ordered him to go down to the midshipmen's berth and make a fair copy.
The First Lieutenant waited anxiously, wondering what orders would follow. Ramage looked at his watch. 'Well, carry on, Mr Aitken. It's half-past eleven - clear decks and up spirits, and make sure the men get their dinner promptly at noon: I don't doubt but they have a good appetite.'
'And this afternoon, sir?' Aitken asked timidly.
Ramage laughed drily. 'We'll let Mr Southwick write in his log, "Ship's company employed A.T.S.R.",' he said referring to the time-honoured abbreviation for 'As the service required'. Then he added: 'I want to hear that grindstone at work: axes, tomahawks, pikes and cutlasses. Check them all. And have Mr Johnson check every musket and pistol...’
CHAPTER FOUR
Ramage was sitting at his desk, trying to finish all the forms the Rear-Admiral would require when they arrived in Barbados, when Southwick came down with the noon position written on a piece of paper. He pointed to the longitude. 'We're making our westing. If this wind holds, we should make a fast passage.'
Ramage glanced at the figures as he gestured to the Master to sit down. The old man put his hat on the cabin sole and wriggled himself comfortable, a movement that Ramage knew from long experience meant he wanted to have a serious talk about something.
Ramage looked at him quizzically. 'How do you think our "Monday morning" went?'
'Better than I expected, sir,' Southwick said frankly. ‘A lot better than I thought possible when we dropped the Lizard astern.'
'You and Aitken have worked hard,' Ramage said.
Southwick shook his head. "Twasn't Aitken and 'twasn't me, sir. The credit is yours.'
'Mine?' Ramage was obviously startled.
'Yours and those dozen scalawags of ours. I must admit I never appreciated them fully when we were in the Triton but they turned the trick here. What with you wielding the stick and carrot from the quarterdeck and those fellows sermonizing on the lower deck like some of Mr Wesley's preachers, the ship's company - well, they're a deal different from the crowd I first clapped eyes on when I boarded at Spithead!'
Ramage rubbed his jaw reflectively. 'Well, all that's past now. I wonder what the Admiral has in store for us at Barbados.'
'Convoy work,' Southwick said gloomily, 'I can feel it in my bones. Taking a dozen merchantmen from Barbados to Grenada and waiting a week while they drum up business, and then take the mules on to St Vincent and St Lucia, and the same there, and an even more infuriating sail up to Antigua with them dropping astern at night and French privateers scurrying out of Martinique to snap 'em up. Mules,' he repeated crossly, 'there isn't a master of a merchant ship that isn't a mule!'
'It may not be as bad as all that,' Ramage said mildly. There was no harm in confiding in the Master. In many ways theirs was a strange relationship; one which had begun years earlier in the Mediterranean when Ramage took over his first command, the Kathleen cutter. He had been given her, he imagined, because Commodore Nelson had taken a liking to him. He had been lucky, as a very green lieutenant with his first command, that Southwick arrived as the Kathleen's master. Southwick was old enough to be his father and was probably one of the finest seamen in the Navy. He could handle the toughest ship's company, treating them like a benevolent father or the Devil's drill sergeant, as the occasion required. Apart from his skill as a Master, though, what had endeared him to Ramage was the way the old man, without ever once overstepping the invisible line separating the captain of the ship from the master (who was only a warrant, not a commission officer), had never let him make a mistake. At times there had been an almost imperceptible shake of the head, at others a cough, occasionally one of the famous sniffs. More important perhaps, was the knowledge that the old Master was on board, a cyclopaedia of knowledge, always at hand, and whom Ramage had never seen ruffled, whether at the prospect of having the tiny cutter rammed by a Spanish line-of-battleship - for that was how the Kathleen had been lost - or by a hurricane, which had sent the Triton brig's masts by the board.
'I'm carrying orders from the First Lord to Rear-Admiral Davis for some special operation,' he said.
'I guessed as much,' Southwick said. 'But is the Juno named in them?'
Ramage shook his head. 'I don't think so. When His Lordship gave me my orders, they were simply "to make the best of my way" ' - he parroted the traditional phrase - "to Barbados, place myself under Admiral Davis's command, and deliver the usual budget of papers. His Lordship did just mention that there was a special operation forthcoming . . .'
'Aye, but if he didn't name the Juno then it won't be for us, sir,' Southwick's voice was even gloomier. 'The Admiral has probably asked for more frigates - admirals never do have enough o' them. His Lordship decided to give you the Juno, since you've just been made post, and send her out to Admiral Davis. If there's any special operation you can be sure the Admiral has his favourites; he won't give plums to a stranger - you don't know him, do you, sir?'
Ramage shook his head. Southwick was right and only echoed his own opinion. The Juno was just another frigate bringing out orders and mail for the Windward and Leeward Islands station; it would be convoy work through the islands. The favoured few captains would be away patrolling the areas off the Spanish Main where there was a chance of finding enemy ships and taking prizes; those out of favour would be with the convoys. An admiral could make a young frigate captain rich in this way (and himself, too, since he shared in the prize money), and one could not blame him if he favoured the captains who had served with him a long time.