Free Ramage's Diamond by Dudley Pope Page B

stowed in sea bags would sprout rich, remarkably coloured mildew, which seemed to flourish on food stains.
    Already Bowen was treating half a dozen men for bad sunburn, men with very sensitive skin who had been affected before Ramage forbade anyone to be on deck without shirts for three hours either side of noon. Despite these problems caused by the hot sun, it was good to have the ship well-aired with scuttles, skylights and ports wide open; the sun, almost overhead at noon, penetrated parts of the
Juno
that had not seen sunlight since the ship was last in the Tropics.
    As he dried his razor and put it away in its leather case, Ramage reflected that one of the few advantages of commanding a ship the size of a frigate was that the captain could usually have hot water for shaving. Today was an exception, and his own fault, since he chose to get up a couple of hours before the galley fire was lit.
    The
Juno
was bowling along in the darkness—groaning along, some might say, since her timbers creaked as she pitched in a sedate seesaw motion. The Trade wind had settled steadily from the north-east and with luck they would now carry it all the way to Barbados. With the following wind came the following seas and the pitching and rolling, so that water slopped out of a basin filled more than a third full and fiddles had to be fitted to the tables—narrow battens which were the only way of preventing plates and cutlery sliding off.
    He could hear the rudder grumbling as the men at the wheel kept the frigate on course, and ropes creaked as they rendered through blocks. The pitching was just enough to make the lanthorn flicker as the flames tried to stay vertical—and enough to make him sit down as he prepared to pull his stockings on.
    Monday morning and the first full day after passing “The Corner.” Well, the ship’s company knew what it meant. The silk of the first stocking was cold; they would have to be a few hundred miles farther south before clothes always felt warm at this time of the day. He smoothed out the wrinkles and reached for the second one. No, there would be few men on board who were looking forward to the approaching dawn. He had not been entirely fair to the men in those early days: he had discovered, by way of his coxswain, Jackson, that the drunken Captain had not been the only cause of the
Juno
’s condition. The one before him had been slack, had rarely made more than a cursory inspection of the ship, and his seamanship had been lamentable. Orders to reef or furl as a squall came up were usually given too late, so that men were injured and sails were ripped. As far as Ramage could make out, the men had spent most of their time repairing sails. And discipline had been almost non-existent.
    This had inevitably thrown all the responsibility on to the other officers. Had they been good men they might have been able to manage, but they were poor specimens who played the game of favourites, hoping that by toadying to a few chosen seamen and petty officers they would have a nucleus who could be relied on. As a result, the rest of the men became the scapegoats for everything that went wrong. Naturally enough, the ship’s company had split into two groups, one large and one small, the victimized and the favoured, and they had hated each other. Then that Captain had been replaced by the drunkard who had cared nothing for the way the ship was run and who had brought his own drunken First Lieutenant with him. Apparently this had finally proved too much for the other officers, who had begun drinking from sheer frustration.
    Because they were frequently drunk, or ill-tempered next morning from the effects of it, the victimization had become worse. The majority of the ship’s company had been reduced to sullen hulks of men who did not give a damn whether a single reef point was left tied so that a sail ripped when it was let fall, and the officers did not give a damn either, knowing that the