Ramage's Mutiny by Dudley Pope

Author:Dudley Pope [Pope, Dudley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Naval Fiction
ISBN: 9780935526905
Google: svv-oQByHFMC
Amazon: 0935526900
Goodreads: 1077361
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 1978-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

cheekbones, eyes that laughed - or, when she was angry, stabbed. Aunt Gianna was slim with an imperious body and jutting breasts that made the ship and the sea fade as he thought about them.

He pushed these thoughts to the back of his mind. Lopez and the Spanish prisoners could be a problem. The lieutenant had been bubbling with indignation and protests because the three of them were not allowed on deck for some exercise, but Ramage could imagine the expression on Lopez's face if he saw the ship now. All the prisoners, officers and seamen alike, had to remain in ignorance of what was going on, and they would have to be told that they might get their throats cut if they made any noise - an idle threat they would readily believe.

He went down to his cabin and spent half an hour poring over the Santa Cruz chart. The port was about thirty miles away now and the west-going current seemed to be less than a knot. The wind had been steady from the east for the past two days, strong enough to overcome any land or sea breeze and likely to hold all the way to the coast. The entrance channel to Santa Cruz ran almost south-east and north-west, and any ship trying to enter it now would probably have to be towed in by boats. Pico de Santa Fe would be deflecting the wind down on to the lagoon and port so that it funnelled through the channel and out between the headlands on each side of the entrance, Punta Reina and Morro Colorado.

He rolled up the chart and put it back in the rack. And that, he told himself sheepishly, is how battles are won or lost: the crazy picture trying to lodge in his imagination had now changed into Captain Ramage's plan. Not a bad plan, come to think of it, but not a good one either. A good one left nothing - or very little, anyway - to chance.

Wagstaffe would be ordered on board to get his instructions after dinner, and at the same time he would explain everything to the rest of the officers. Then he would muster the ship's company aft and tell them. Not that anyone would need much explanation. Once you knew the basic idea, the rest was obvious.

After a dinner of mutton, he thought gloomily. It was a pity they had had to kill another sheep so soon, but they had needed the bucket of blood. Apart from cutting the Captain-General's nephew's throat, the sheep was the only source of supply. Antigua sheep must lead hard lives; the meat from the last one was the toughest he had tasted for a long time.

He took out the Spanish signal book to compare it with the one used by the Royal Navy. The Spaniards must find it hard to communicate at sea; there were no more than fifty signals listed in this one, compared with nearly four hundred in the Calypso's book.

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