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Dudley pope
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SYNOPSIS |
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Regular sleep had been impossible in the hot and windless night so typical of the hurricane season in Jamaica: the occasional slight zephyr venturing in through the window rarely had enough energy to penetrate the mosquito net and cool him. After a night when every brief doze drifted him into a wild dream, Ramage sat at the breakfast table feeling as limp as damp laundry, sipping coffee and squinting at the reality of the harsh sun reflecting into the hotel dining-room despite a latticed jalousie over each window.
He took a letter from his pocket and read it for the fifth or sixth time since a special messenger had delivered it the previous evening. Addressed to "Lieutenant Ramage, at the Royal Albion Hotel", it was signed "Pilcher Skinner", and beneath the hurried scrawl a clerk had written, "Knight, Vice-Admiral and Cornmander-in-Chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels ... upon the Jamaica Station".
The wording of the letter was straightforward enough, and many a young lieutenant losing his command after a hurricane ripped the masts out of his ship and drifted her up on a coral reef would have been glad to receive it. But Ramage knew that Vice-Admiral Sir Pilcher Skinner was far from being a straightforward man.
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