Post Captain Ramage is prowling the Tuscan coast and far from English aid when he encounters a daunting French invasion fleet. As the enemy gathers strength, Ramage must decide how to thwart its actions with only the frigate Calypso and a pair of bomb ketches. "Not even C. S. Forester knows more about the routine and battle procedures of the British Navy in the days of Nelson." -- The New York Times Dudley Pope is well known both as the creator of the Ramage novels and as a distinguished naval historian. Pope falsified his age in order to enlist in the British Merchant Navy during World War II. In action, his ship was torpedoed and he spent 14 days at sea in an open lifeboat. After being discharged due to the injuries he received, he worked as the naval and defense correspondent at the London Daily News. He turned to writing fiction at the urging of C. S. Forester, who viewed Pope as his creative heir. Author of ten scholarly works as well as the 18 books in the Ramage series, Dudley Pope died in 1997. Dudley Bernard Egerton Pope was born in 1925 into an ancient Cornish seafaring family. He joined the Merchant Navy at 16 and spent much of his early life at sea. During the Second World War, his boat was torpedoed, resulting in spinal injuries that plagued Pope for the rest of his life. Toward the end of the war, Pope turned to journalism, becoming the Naval and Defense Correspondent for the London Evening News. He also began researching naval history and in time became an authority on the Napoleonic era and Nelson's exploits, authoring several well-received volumes, especially on the Battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. Hornblower creator C. S. Forester urged Pope to try his hand at fiction and saw the younger writer as his literary heir. With Ramage (1965), Pope began what was to become an impressive series; over the next 24 years, he produced 17 more novels tracing the exploits of the fictional Lord Nicholas Ramage's career during the Napoleonic Wars. The Daily Mirror proclaimed him “the first and still favourite rival to Hornblower.” Pope lived, along with his wife and daughter, aboard boats, where he wrote the majority of his novels. Most of his adult life was spent in the Caribbean. Besides using the locale for fictional settings, he also wrote an authoritative naval history of the region, including a biography of the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan. Pope died in 1997 at age 71. The Ramage Touch By Dudley Pope McBooks Press, Inc. Copyright © 1979 Dudley Pope All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59013-007-0 CHAPTER 1 WHEN Ramage eventually succeeded in focusing the night-glass on the two distant ships, because it showed an inverted image they were faintly outlined against the stars and looked like bats hanging side by side and upside down from a beam. Southwick and Aitken stood beside him at the quarterdeck rail attempting to conceal their impatience. The vessels had been spotted ten minutes earlier by a masthead lookout, who had seen them momentarily against a rising star. The Master was the first to give up trying, "Frigates, are they, sir?" "No." "Nor ships of the line?" Southwick's voice indicated more hopefulness than fear, even though the Calypso herself was only a frigate. "No," Ramage said sarcastically, although secretly amused at the old man's pugnacious attitude, which was obviously under a strain because they had been back in the Mediterranean for several days now without firing a gun, except at exercise. "As soon as I identify them, I'll tell you. Or you can take this —" he offered the night-glass, which was the only one left in the ship because the other had been broken within hours of leaving Gibraltar, "and go aloft to look for yourself." Southwick patted his paunch and grinned in the darkness. "I'll wait, sir. Sorry, but it makes me impatient ..." "Don't get too excited," Ramage warned. "Although they're damn'd odd-looking ships they're small. And they're steering for the coast." "You mean we won't catch 'em before they reach it, sir?" "Not with this whiffling wind. Either they've spotted us and are going to run up on the beach and set themselves on fire because they can't escape, or they haven't and, because they can't make headway against wind and current, have decided to edge in and anchor in the lee of Punta Ala. They can stay there until the wind strengthens, or veers more to the north. In fact, I doubt if they've seen us and are waiting for a veer. They must be as sick as we are of tacking in this light southerly." Ramage looked up at the sails, great rectangles blotting out whole constellations of stars, but there was so little wind that there was only a slight belly in the canvas. For once he was grateful that for the moment there was not enough chilly down-draught to make him turn up the collar of his boat-cloak. He could see the quartermaster was dancing from one side of the binnacle to the other, watching the luffs, while the men at the wheel felt the ship almost d