Cargill took out a large silk handkerchief and mopped his face. "Hot in here, isn't it. Yes, Ramage, nothing you've said contradicts the canons of military tactics. You've no trained troops, anyway."
"No, indeed," Ramage said. "If I had, I would of course, with the Earl of Innes' approval, invite you to lead them."
The earl nodded and turned his face away quickly so that Cargill could not see his relief. He had no wish to assert his authority over Cargill in front of three admirals - he could just imagine the Secretary of State for War's comments when the news reached Dundas's office - but damnation, his own wife was one of the hostages, and no clod like Cargill, who'd never smelled powder, was going to put her life at risk.
This fellow Ramage had already marched three admirals, two generals, a marquis, a brace of earls, a viscount and a couple of heirs out of Castello at Giglio, signing a receipt for the French commandant with everyone smiling at each other, and not a pistol waved, let alone fired. Call that guile, chicanery, deception or whatever this dam' fool Cargill chose, but by any gentleman's measure it was a fine piece of cool bravery, and if the Earl of Blazey's son could do it again to get the women out safely, then Cargill had better keep out of the way.
The earl shook his head. Cargill was running true to form - a nouveau riche family had brought him promotion, so Cargill had never bothered to learn soldiering, other than primping in front of a mirror and then stamping and shouting his way round a parade ground. Typical of the man was the way he used a loud and abrasive voice to disguise his ignorance and shout down anyone who tried to argue.
Young Ramage obviously recognized the type and had cut Cargill down to size without ever raising his voice above a quiet conversational level. In fact Lord Ball, at this end of the table, had been sitting the whole time with his head forward, hand cupped behind his ear, just to hear what Ramage was saying.
Ramage held up a hand to attract Silkin. "You can begin serving," he said. To the men sitting round the table he said: "Gentlemen, a frigate's fare is of necessity sparse."
He does not apologize, Sir Henry noted, he just explains. The admiral happened to glance up and accidentally caught the Earl of Innes' eye. The earl's name stood second on the list of lieutenants-general; he would be a field marshal in the next lot of promotions. Cargill's name must be well down a list which included a couple of hundred majors-general. The earl was so much Cargill's superior in rank that the men sitting round the table could be forgiven for thinking Cargill was trying to commit professional suicide. In fact, Sir Henry guessed, the wretched Cargill was sublimely certain that he was making a great impression on Lieutenant-General the Earl of Innes. Come to think of it, he was. He imagined the earl drafting a report to the Horse Guards describing Cargill's conduct. No, it would not be done that way; the earl would simply make a comment, and that would be that. But that was all in the future: the earl could not visit the Horse Guards until all the present problems were solved; until wives were restored to husbands. For a moment he thought of the members of the Board sitting at the long, highly polished table in the Board Room at the Admiralty. They would not be conscious of the ticking of the Thomas Bradley clock just inside the door - a clock which had recorded the time since just after the Restoration. By now there would be a fire burning - and none of the members would recall (if they knew in the first place) that the back of the fireplace comprised a cast iron plate showing the arms of Charles II. Earl St Vincent would be sitting at the head of the table, with the windows overlooking the stables on his left, the fireplace and wall with the chart rollers on the right.
John Jervis, now first Earl St Vincent, was a very lucky man. Lucky because he had little skill handling a fleet in battle, and his great victory against the combined fleets of France and Spain off Cape St Vincent was due to Nelson, then an obscure commodore, who had the guts to quit the British line to cut off the escaping enemy. But... the idea fluttered along the edges of his memory ... was not young Ramage involved in it? Lieutenant Nicholas Ramage? A cutter - the Kathleen, or some such name. Yes! Ramage had seen that Jervis had not realized the French and Spanish were escaping, and he sailed his cutter across the bows of the leading enemy ship, the San Nicolas.
The Spanish three-decker sank the Kathleen and, by a miracle, Ramage and many of his crew survived, but the unexpected move delayed the enemy long enough for Nelson in the Captain to quit the line to take advantage of Ramage's action.
Nelson had been followed by some other captains while Jervis sailed on, unaware of what was going on (or, more likely, unable to gauge its significance). But because the British fleet won the battle, its commander-in-chief received the customary earldom and Sir Jervis took his title from the cape, and Nelson received a baronetcy. Not a knighthood, Sir Henry recalled, which had no outward form, but a baronetcy, which gave him something to sew on the breast of his coat.
Yes, Nelson is an odd little man, quite out of the run of the usual flag officers. And that, he admitted, was an ambiguous remark because Nelson had put an end to the traditional idea that breaking the enemy's line of battle and capturing a couple of ships was enough to claim victory.
Yes, Nelson had recently introduced a new fashion at sea, when the complete destruction of the enemy's fleet is the objective: he started at Cape St Vincent, where he had captured three of the four enemy ships taken (leading the boarding parties against two of them); then at the Nile a few years ago, by then a rear-admiral (a promotion which several jealous admirals resented bitterly), he had burned or captured thirteen of the French fleet of seventeen ships. And then had come Copenhagen.
The man was brilliant, even if his high-pitched voice and high-flown opinions sometimes ruffled feathers. Luckily, Earl St Vincent had been magnanimous enough to accept Nelson's brilliance at St Vincent, and he had been responsible for Nelson being at the Nile and then Copenhagen. So the taciturn St Vincent, while not approving of Nelson's private life with Lady Hamilton (who did!), recognized him as the Navy's foremost fighting man.
What the deuce brought on those thoughts? Sir Henry thought back. Oh yes, wives being restored to husbands, and the Board's view.
Well, the Board's view would be a pale reflection of St Vincent's, since no member of the Board would dare to stand up to the earl, whose pithy, abrupt comments were passed round the Navy like children playing "Pass the parcel". "A naval officer who marries is an officer lost to the Service" - the earl (while still Sir John Jervis) had just about broken Sir Thomas Troubridge's heart with that letter, particularly since St Vincent was wrong and Sir Thomas did not intend to marry.
So how would the Board (which meant the earl) now regard Ramage's activities over the wives? Sir Henry realized that he too could be heavily involved in any recriminations, and so could Smarden and Keeler, although Keeler gave the appearance of being a trimmer. After a year's close observation of the man, Sir Henry had decided that Keeler would always be on the winning side - until the last moment, when he would make a fatal mistake which would bring him down. Glib, hale-fellow-well-met, quick to ingratiate himself with the wives of superior officers as he struggled to get to the top, Keeler was what Sir Henry privately regarded as a two of clubs: outwardly the same shape and colour as the card on which was printed the ace of spades - but worthless.
Wives. So if Ramage was delayed in completing the Admiralty orders to rescue the hostages because he was going back for the wives, or if going back meant a failure of any sort, then young Ramage would be done for: the earl would make sure that he ended his days either on the beach on half-pay (not that that would matter: once he succeeded his father he would be a very rich man) or as captain of a transport - the ultimate punishment for someone of Ramage's temperament and calibre.