Ramage & the Saracens by Dudley Pope

Author:Dudley Pope [Pope, Dudley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Naval Fiction
ISBN: 9781590130230
Google: G97NeCT2t9gC
Amazon: 1590130235
Goodreads: 401943
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 1988-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Ramage's cabin was crowded: as usual Southwick sat in the armchair, Aitken, Kenton and Martin were crowded together on the settee and Hill and Rennick stood either side of the door, their beads canted because of the low headroom.

Ram age looked up from his desk and said without any preliminaries: "There's little doubt that Licata will be the next target for the Saracens, probably in about eight days' time."

With the exception of the first lieutenant and master, the rest of the officers looked startled; as though their captain had started fortune telling. Ramage immediately noticed and went on to explain how he had reached that conclusion.

As Ramage finished with his estimate of the number of vessels that the Saracens would have, Hill said: "How are we going to tackle that number, sir?"

"We aren't," Ramage said shortly. "There's no way we can. In other words we can't deal with them at sea."

He stopped with that remark and it was left to Hill to echo, questioningly, the phrase: "At sea?"

"Yes," Ramage said briskly. "We've got to destroy these damned pirates, and the only way we can do it is trap them on shore. They might outnumber us - probably will - but we'll have to make up for that with surprise.

"I intend landing every Marine and seaman that can be spared, and every carronade and boat gun we have. We will mount the guns where they will do the most harm - in houses covering quays, places like that - and the men will be billeted in the houses, armed with muskets and pistols, along with pikes and cutlasses.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.