Ramage

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Ramage felt dazed and grabbed at the thoughts rushing through his head: he guessed it was a nightmare, so he would soon wake up safely in his cabin; but for the moment his mind was apparently separated from his body, floating along free like a puff of smoke in the wind. All that noise sounded like continuous thunder and now he was beginning to wake up, hesitating and unwilling to open his eyes and slide from blissful and contented drowsiness into the sharp bright light of consciousness.

Yet he felt a vague uneasiness, wondering if he had overslept and would be late on watch. Uneasiness gave way to apprehension as slowly he realized the thunder was of gunfire: from an enemy's broadsides, punctuated by the occasional deep-chested, bronchitic cough of his own ship's 12-pounder cannons firing, followed by the familiar cartwheels-across-a-wooden-bridge rumble of the trucks as the carriages jerked back in recoil until they reached the limits of the thick rope breechings, which groaned under the strain of halting them.

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