When Ramage had asked him to explain what mistakes if any the others made, Aitken had described them with the coolness and fairness of a judge summing up before a jury. On several points Ramage interrupted only to point out that there were often two or three different ways of doing things, and at the end Aitken made a point that Ramage had borne in mind from the start - that actually faced with, for example, a bowsprit and jibboom torn away, it was easier to remember everything that had to be done because you could see it, whereas sitting in the great cabin you could only imagine it. Ramage had agreed - and then pointed out that each and every one of the operations they had been discussing might have to be carried out on a pitch-dark night, probably with a gale blowing off a lee shore, since only bad weather or battle damage were likely to cause the mishaps ...
But he was satisfied with their answers and told them so, and as he bade them goodnight he had repeated the phrase he had used to Aitken earlier: 'It's the unexpected that sinks ships.' From the look on their faces he guessed that the First Lieutenant had already quoted it, probably with some embellishments of his own.
So now, Ramage told himself as he shut the Journal and put it away in a drawer, the Juno was as prepared as he could make her for anything that Admiral Davis or the French had in store. It would probably be convoy work, but despite Southwick's gloomy attitude, it could provide some excitement. The Windward Islands at the southern end of the chain were effectively split from the Leeward Islands to the north by the French in Martinique and Guadeloupe. At Martinique the harbour of Fort Royal - anchorage rather, since Fort Royal itself was on one side of an enormous, wedge-shaped bay - was large enough for a whole fleet, with plenty of room for them to swing. Guadeloupe, shaped like a ragged butterfly pinned to a board, was one of those islands with dozens of small bays protected by reefs, and designed by a spiteful Nature as a perfect haven for privateers.
For a minute or two he listened to the seas hissing past the Juno's hull as the rudder pintles grumbled in the gudgeons. Although he had been up long before dawn he did not feel sleepy. With the Juno making some two hundred miles a day, they would soon be in Barbados, anchoring under the watchful eye of the Admiral. There was little at the moment to raise his wrath; not one man on the sick list, thanks to Bowen, who must be one of the finest surgeons in the Service; not one man killed or injured in an accident; not one sail blown out, though that was due more to the eagle eye of Southwick, who saw to it that sails were sent down for repairs in good time: most of the sails in the Juno's outfit were as ripe as pears, the canvas so old that the sailmaker swore incessantly as he tried to make stitches hold when sewing in new cloths or cringles.
If the Admiral wanted to time the ship's company he would find they could make sail, reef and furl as fast and as well as any frigate Ramage could remember. The only thing that could spoil it all would be for him to make a mistake while bringing the Juno into Carlisle Bay at Barbados or have a gun misfire when firing the salute, throwing out the timing. Or for the cable to kink while running through the hawse so the anchor touched the bottom a couple of minutes late, putting the ship a hundred yards or so away from where she should have anchored and perhaps letting her drift into another ship - the flagship, for instance.
Ramage tugged his ear thoughtfully. Many a new ship joining an admiral had through some small mistake given her captain a poor reputation with the admiral that he never lived down. An anchor buoy rope too short for the depth of water, so that with the anchor down the buoy was submerged; some delay in hoisting out a boat: some trifling form not filled in and delivered to the admiral . . . There was also, Ramage remembered with a grin, the case of the captain who brought his ship in with a great flourish and began firing the salute without the gunner having made sure the guns were unshotted: the first gun of the salute had put a roundshot through the governor's stables, though fortunately without killing grooms or horses.
He picked up his hat and went up the companionway, acknowledging the Marine sentry's salute. It was a glorious tropical night with more stars than seemed believable. Orion's Belt, Sirius like a glinting diamond, the Milky Way wider, longer and much more distinct than in northern latitudes, and the Pole Star very low on the starboard beam, a bare twelve degrees above the horizon and the navigator's friend. In the northern hemisphere the number of degrees the Pole Star was above the horizon throughout the night was your latitude: they would soon be in twelve degrees of latitude, running their westing down to arrive at Barbados, which was also in twelve degrees, and the Pole Star would be a dozen degrees above the horizon, having dipped a little every night from the fifty degrees of the English Channel. Being sure of your longitude, though, was a different matter ...
These nights before reaching Barbados were always the best part of a voyage to the West Indies: you remembered all the good things of the Caribbean, and forgot the bad - the whining mosquitoes that destroyed sleep, the wretched and almost invisible sand flies at dawn and sunset which attacked you as though armed with red-hot needles, the sweltering heat and humidity, the appalling sickness ...
The West Indies: from the time he was a young midshipman who would not need a razor for another year or so, the words had fascinated him. In later years he had come to know them well, from the cliffs and mountains and thick green rain forests of the southern islands of the Windwards like Grenada, St Vincent and St Lucia, to the flatter Antigua of the Leewards, drier and almost arid in parts, from the smoothly rounded high hills - one could hardly call them mountains, and they always reminded him of Tuscany - of the Virgin Islands to the green lushness and mountains of Hispaniola and Jamaica.
The clear blue waters where you could often see the bottom at fifty feet, watching barracuda dart like silver daggers into a shoal of small fish, and the slower, grey shapes of sharks swimming smoothly, looking and waiting. And seeing the Spanish mackerel suddenly leap out of the water like a silver arrow in an arc a dozen feet high to land ten yards away in the midst of a swarm of silversides. The pelicans, outrageous looking birds and gawky when you watched them perched on a broken mangrove stump, holding out their wings like scarecrows, drying their feathers, but masters of the air when you saw them gliding along with wingtips an inch or two above the water, or searching higher in a strong wind, and suddenly diving vertically into the water, to fill the sack of skin under their long beak with fish. And the tiny laughing gulls harrying the good-natured pelicans, following them as they dived and as soon as they surfaced perching on their heads or backs, waiting eagerly to snatch any small fish that might escape from the pelican's beak. The black frigate birds, true scavengers of the sea, long forked tails and thin wings like enormously overgrown swallows, but without the swallow's beauty - indeed, they were menacing-looking birds, all black except for some with white breasts. The frigate bird would often hover high over some headland for an hour at a time, a black speck seemingly motionless, and then swoop and pick up some piece of garbage, never getting its feathers wet, rarely trying for a live fish. He was looking for a piece of rotten fruit, or a dead fish, stinking and bloated.
And the land: always the palm trees, their fronds rustling with the evening breeze, and the flamboyant - now, at the beginning of the hurricane season, they would be flowering, the whole tree a great mass of scarlet as though it was on fire. The frangipani, a spindly tree with flowers like stars with a most delicate perfume. And the belle of the night, which he had been lucky enough to see a few times: a great flower that spent weeks preparing, and then bloomed in one night, becoming a mass of golden strands in a white cup. By next morning, as soon as there was any heat in the sun, it closed up and died, it's brief beauty never seen unless someone came along with a lantern.