Ramage 03 - Ramage & the Freebooters by Dudley Pope

Author:Dudley Pope
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-04-26T23:00:00+00:00

stylized object.

Anyway, it seemed that Southwick had told the master's mate, who'd told a quartermaster. Soon a request had come back from the ship's company: if they found a real triton shell could they use it to replace the wooden one?

This, Ramage realized in retrospect, was one of the first solid indications that not only had the original ship's company and the former Kathleens become firmly knitted together, but they'd developed a pride in their ship. And pride in a ship, he knew only too well from past experience, meant a happy ship. So he'd agreed, offering a guinea to the man who found a shell of the right size to fit into Triton's hand.

The men had been delighted--a guinea was within a shilling or two of a month's pay for most of them; but Ramage knew whoever found such a shell would have earned it--the wooden one was a foot long, and the shells were rarely more than eight or nine inches. He also knew that the man who found it would be the proudest in the ship ...

Occasionally Southwick, his white hair flying in the wind, stumped up to the bow to watch the gilders at work. It was a fiddling but fascinating job, and Ramage too had watched them begin.

After cleaning up the whole carving and scrubbing it with fresh water and soap to remove salt and dirt, they'll let it dry, one of them watching in case spray deposited more salt on it. They'd then carefully covered it with canvas for the night and next morning were badgering the bosun's mate for a tin of yellow paint, wanting to pour off some of the thick oil on top to use as size.

Leaving the oil to stand in a pot, they'd painted the figurehead with the appropriate colours, and when they were dry, brushed on the size where the gold leaf was to be applied, and left it until it was almost dry.

By that time they'd managed to wheedle a chamois leather from Southwick and sewn it into a small, fiat pad. Once again, with all the enthusiasm of schoolboys, they'd gone back to the bow, secured ropes round their waists in case they fell, and despite the pitching and rolling, with the sea bubbling and spouting only a few feet below them, managed to transfer the gold leaf piece by piece from the book in which it was kept to the chamois leather pad.

One man had obviously worked as a gilder because each time he had, with a quick twist of the wrist, pressed the pad precisely against the place where the leaf was to be applied, so the leaf stuck to the size. Since each leaf was about two inches long and one inch wide, and so light that a gentle puff was enough to blow it three or four feet, Ramage was glad to hear they'd lost only three leaves in sudden gusts of wind.

Just after nine o'clock the foremast lookout's hail of 'Deck

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.