"Pope, Dudley - Nicholas Ramage 17 - Ramage and the Saracens 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pope Dudley)

And then . . '. and then had come the peace following the Treaty of Amiens, and Gianna had decided that she must return to her kingdom of Volterra. His father and he had argued with her, warning her that she would be at risk from Napoleon's assassins, and that the peace would not last. But she would not listen and she had left London for Paris, on her way to Italy. They had heard nothing more of her, and in the meantime Ramage had met and married Sarah, now his wife. Gianna was an ever-fading memory, jogged into existence again whenever he looked at Paolo and remembered. As he had just done. But memories of Gianna were fading, of that there was no doubt; he had difficulty in recalling the details of her face; all that remained was a picture of her personality: lively, at times imperious, warm yet hot-tempered, but for all that very much the ruler of the kingdom of Volterra which, small on the map, yet loomed large in the life of the young girl who - until Napoleon's Army of Italy drove her out - was its sole ruler.

He put the telescope back to his eye. What a long string of memories had been called up by watching Paolo climbing the rigging. How different was Sarah, the wife he had left in England.

It was strange how the Calypso's ship's company knew both women so well. Gianna because many of them had helped rescue her and been on board the ship that took her back to England, and Sarah for a similar reason, only this time the rescue had been from an island off the coast of Brazil.

Yes, those two sail had hauled their wind to meet him, and he was sure they were not frigates: more like ships of the line. A couple of ships making their way from Naples to Gibraltar - or through the Gut on their way to England - would be nothing out of the ordinary; in fact it would be a commonplace, a one-line entry in his journal, merely noting the date, time and names of the ships.

Orsini hailed from the masthead and Kenton snatched up the speaking trumpet to reply. The two sail, Paolo reported, were ships of the line and they had come round on to opposing courses. Their hulls were still below the horizon so it was impossible to identify them.

"Tell him to keep a sharp lookout," Ramage said without thinking.

Paolo of all people would keep a sharp lookout. His hatred of the French would make sure of that. Ever since the end of the brief peace following the Treaty of Amiens, when his aunt had vanished and it seemed only logical to suppose that she had either been murdered by Napoleon's men or imprisoned, he had added bitterness to his hatred. No Frenchman, Ramage suspected, should ever ask Paolo for quarter.

Down at one of the forward guns on the starboard side a group of seamen gossiped, having completed the morning's exercises and expecting any minute to get the order to run the gun in and secure it. They had heard the lookout's hail and Midshipman Orsini's report; they knew that now they would have to wait until the two ships were close enough to answer the challenge.

"We seem to spend 'arf our life waitin'," growled Stafford, a Cockney seaman. "Ships of the line - must be ours: stands to reason, after Trafalgar."

"It'll take more than Trafalgar to change the rules," said Jackson. "We didn't sink every French ship of the line, you know."

"The way Staff tells the story, we did!" said Rossi, the Italian from Genoa. "Not one escaped!"

"We didn't do too badly," Stafford said complacently. "A few frigates got away, but they'll be too scared to come out for months."

He spoke without considering that the other four of the gun's crew were French, royalists who had signed on in the Royal Navy after helping Ramage and his wife Sarah escape from France when war had broken out again.

"Don't underestimate Napoleon," said one of the men.

"Boney wasn't at Trafalgar, Louis," Stafford said contemptuously. "Pity 'e wasn't; we'd have taken him prisoner and led 'im up Ludgate 'ill with a chain round 'is neck and 'anded 'im over to the Lord Mayor."

"He's cunning," Louis persisted. "See how he has gone off to attack Russia ..."

"Well, he don't need a navy to attack them, I must say," Stafford admitted.

"And it means he has time to rebuild his navy," Louis insisted.

"He ain't got much time," Stafford said emphatically. "Yer can't build a ship of the line in six months, 'specially if you ain't got no wood to speak of, and we know 'e ain't."

"He's got enough wood to repair those ships we knocked about," Jackson said. "Patch 'em up and send 'em to sea to interfere with our shipping - that would soon have us hopping about."

"I don't see why," Stafford said stubbornly.

"Use your head," Jackson said sharply. "A ship of the line at sea on the loose means at least one of our snips of the line finding her. And it means a dozen or more looking for her. Don't think it'd be a question of sending out a frigate or two ..."

"All right, all right, I get your point," Stafford conceded. "But I presume their Lordships will be keepin' a blockade on places like Brest, Lorient, Cadiz and Toulon."

"And Ferrol, and Cartagena . . . You forget the Dons have more ports than the French - as many, anyway. And to prevent one ship slipping out on a dark night it has to be a tight blockade."

"Frigates," Louis said unexpectedly. "Supposing the French turned loose all their frigates to raid convoys. Don't forget we rarely have more than a couple of frigates escorting the big West Indian convoys-just imagine three French frigates attacking ..."