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

Suddenly from below came Southwick's stentorian voice bellowing: 'Wakey, wakey there! Come on--lash up and stow; show a leg, show a leg, look alive there! Lash up and stow, the sun's burning your eyeballs out!'

Every few moments, sounding fainter as he walked forward, the Master repeated the time-honoured and time-worn orders and imprecations--normally bawled by the bosun's mates and puntuated by the shrill notes of their bosun's calls --to rouse out the men and have them roll their hammocks and bedding into long sausage shapes and lash them up with the regulation number of turns.

Then the men would troop up on deck to stow the hammocks in the racks of netting along the top of the bulwarks. There--covered with long strips of canvas to keep them dry --they also formed a barricade against musket-fire when the ship went into action, 'Lash up and stow, lash up and stow...'

The voice was very faint: Southwick must be right up forward now, turning to retrace his steps and see how many of the sixty-one men were obeying. This was the first of several crucial moments he and Ramage had to face in the next twenty minutes.

Then the Master was back on deck, swinging the lantern. He said quietly: 'All the Kathleens and the Marines are lashing their hammocks. The rest haven't moved. Harris's hammock is the nearest as you go forward.'

'Better than I expected. We'll wait a couple of minutes.'

The first half dozen of the seamen came up the ladder, running to the bulwarks amidships and placing their hammocks in the netting. Normally it was done by orders; but there were no petty officers to give them. Although more men came up from below Ramage did not bother to count-- Southwick would be doing that.

The Master murmured: 'Twenty-nine still below, sir.'

There was no chance those men were being slow.

'Give me the lantern.'

'Go carefully, sir. Let me come with you.'

'No, stay here, and get those men working--unrolling the hammock cloths, or anything that keeps them occupied."

Now Ramage felt the cold of dawn and the more penetrating chill of fear. The black of night was fast turning grey; in a few minutes there'd be no need for lanterns on deck.

He stepped down the companionway and turned forward past the little cabins. As he went through the door in the bulkhead which divided off the officers' and warrant officers' accommodation from the forward part of the ship where the seamen slung their hammocks, he held the lantern higher, so it lit up his face. He had to crouch, since there was a bare five feet of headroom, but he'd learned long ago to walk with his knees slightly bent and back arched so he could keep his head upright.

The air was fetid: it was air breathed too long and too often by more than sixty men, and stank of sweat and bilge water.

Then he was abreast the first hammock which, its shape distorted by the body of the man in it, cast weird shadows as it swung to the roll of the brig.

'Harris,' Ramage said quietly.

The man sat up quickly, carefully keeping his head low to avoid banging it on me beams above him. He was, as Ramage had planned, in an uncomfortable and undignified position.

'Sir?'

'Harris, I can remember when I was a midshipman...'

He paused, forcing Harris to say:

'Yes, sir?'

'Yes, Harris, I remember one poor midshipman cracked his skull. Died five days later. There'd have been trouble if he'd regained consciousness and said who'd done it. He didn't though, and we managed to change a new hammock for the one cut down...'

Again he paused, and he sensed each of the other men in his hammock was feeling the same tension as Harris who, because Ramage's voice tailed off, was yet again forced to say:

'Yes, sir?'