"Pope, Dudley - Ramage - Ramage and the Freebooters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pope Dudley)

'I know,' Jackson said soberly. 'That's why I'm...'

He didn't finish the sentence, and Ramage knew there was nothing more the American could tell him.

The task was simple enough; the execution was so complicated he doubted if anyone could do it. Who, with nothing to offer, could talk honest men into dividing their loyalty?

'Go back on board,' he told Jackson, 'and pass the word to Mr Southwick that I'll be out within the hour. But don't tell anyone else.'

*

The boatman at the tiller of the little cutter slicing its way through the choppy sea to take Ramage to the brig at anchor near the Spit Sand outside the harbour was as talkative and inquisitive as his mate was silent and uninterested.

'The Triton you said, sir?'

'Yes.'

'Nice little ship. Just finished refitting, they say.'

Ramage nodded.

'You'll be the new capting, I suppose, sir?'

Ramage dodged the question in case the man was in the pay of the mutineers, and asked: 'What happened to her present one?'

'Put on shore by the mutineers he was, like a lot of the officers from the ships of the line. An 'ard man, they do say.'

Ramage nodded.

'Took me new Master out to her last night.'

Ramage nodded again and, tapping the leather bag he held on his lap, said, 'I'm merely a messenger.'

The boatman eyed his trunk stowed under a tarpaulin to protect it from the spray.

'Aye,' he said, with all the insolence of a man who carried a Protection in his pocket, exempting him from the attention of a press gang, 'I guessed you must be.'

With that he spat to leeward and, jamming his hip against the tiller, dug into his pocket for a knife and a quid of tobacco. He sliced off a piece, stuck it in his mouth and began chewing.

The Triton was at anchor off Fort Monckton and just dear of Spit Sand, the big shoal on the Gosport side which almost sealed off the V-shaped entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. The shoal left only a narrow channel for large ships and it ran close in along the Southsea and Portsmouth side. Ramage noted grimly, as an idea began to form in his mind, that at half-ebb and half-flood the tidal stream there was very strong.

At first the Gosport shore sheltered the harbour entrance from the brisk west wind, but as the cutter slipped across the shallow Hamilton Bank the waves were short and high and spray blew aft, and Ramage wrapped himself in his boat cloak.

As the cutter beat down parallel with the coast he could see the Triton more clearly. Finally, with the brig bearing north-west the boatman growled:

'Mind yer 'ead, sir: smartly with them sheets, Bert.'

He pushed the tiller over and the sail swung across, filled on the other tack, and the cutter sped directly towards the brig.

Outlined against fiat land to the south of Haslar Hospital the little brig looked trim and warlike. Her two masts were exactly me same height; her hull gleamed black with a broad white strake sweeping along a few inches below the top of her bulwarks and a little wider than her gun ports, which showed as five black squares. She was floating low on her marks--showing she'd been provisioned for several months --and her yards were hanging square.