by Dudley Pope
It'd taken him all this time to realize that. Southwick had known and the men had known - he recalled Southwick's message from the Kathleens. But Lieutenant Nicolas Ramage had not known. And yet in a way he had. Not by thinking of it as a complete sequence of events: he hadn't steered the Kathleen for the San Nicolas with the idea of trying to defeat a Franco-Spanish armada against England. He'd done it to slow down Cordoba's van. But, he realized, the greatest archway ever built was made of small bricks and rocks, and each one of them depended on the others, and they all depended on one, the keystone.
He broke the seal of the letter. It was from one of the Admiral's staff. The Lively frigate was leaving for England with the Commander-in-Chief’s dispatches for the Admiralty, and Lieutenant Ramage was to return in her as a passenger if he was well enough to be moved. In view of the fact the frigate was well below her complement, Lieutenant Ramage was to name twenty-five of the best men from among his former ship's company and send them on board with the Master. For Lieutenant Ramage's personal information, the letter added, another frigate was leaving the Fleet shortly for Gibraltar and then returning to England with the Marchesa di Volterra, and if Lieutenant Ramage wished to write...
Which meant, he realized with a joy which drove away all thoughts of the pain in his head, he'd be waiting to welcome her to English soil. And if the Spring arrived at St. Kew before an Admiralty letter bringing him orders, they'd walk together among the blossoms and the fresh green grass, alone for the first time without the threat of urgency of war tapping them on the shoulder.
FB2 document info
Document ID: e82aae64-d0d6-4bfa-9c55-2202b45234ed
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 29 December 2009
Created using: FB Editor v2.0 software
Document authors :
Your Name (Скаут)
Source URLs :
http://csforester.narod.ru/index1.htm
Document history:
Ramage #2
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
