by Dudley Pope
Finally Edwards had called on each man in turn to make his defence against the charges. None of them had anything more to say. Summers, the first to be asked, had said he was guilty as charged, and that he now realized that no matter how tyrannical Captain Wallis had been, it was no excuse for mutiny and murder, but it was done . . .
The court was cleared and as the provost marshal shut the door Edwards gave a deep sigh and pushed his chair back. "Well, that's goodbye to me ever getting my flag, but no one can say we haven't given the beggars a fair trial."
Marden stood up and Ramage watched him pace round the cabin, his hands clasped behind his back and small enough to be able to walk without bending his head to avoid hitting the beams. "How much do we believe?" Marden demanded and, gesturing at Gowers's pile of paper, added: "And how much do we record in the minutes?"
Edwards sighed and said: "I wish I knew. How much to record, that is. I'll have a word with the Admiral before Gowers writes his fair copy."
The cabin seemed enormous to Ramage now that the prisoners and their escort had left. Its size was exaggerated by the few men left at the table. Five captains, he reflected, who have been looking back two years in time, using the uncertain telescope of men's memories. The minutes should give a detailed picture of the mutiny in the Jocasta and its causes - as detailed and true as question and honest answer could make it.
The answers, particularly from Summers, had been honest; he was sure of that, although far from certain why he was so sure. He believed Weaver, too. That use of "us" was very significant: the Jocastas were united in their terror of Wallis even though they disagreed over how to do anything about it.
Now Edwards stood up and walked round to the front of the table, to where he could look at the other captains. He turned the witness's chair and sat down in it, crossing his legs and tapping his fingers on the hilt of his sword. He waited until Marden resumed his seat and then asked him flatly: "What do you make of it all ?"
Marden said violently: "I'll stand trial for saying it, but Sir Hyde Parker ought to be in the dock, not these men. As Commander-in-Chief he should have warned Wallis long ago. Sent him home, in fact."
"If he knew, " Edwards said.
"He knew all right." Marden's voice was harsh now and his face drawn by strong emotion. "Most of us who've been out here a few years had heard enough stories about Wallis. Now we know they were true. Not only true, but worse than we suspected. Far worse. And Sir Hyde knew; he's seen Wallis's journals with the figures for flogging. I only wish we had the latest one."
"Well, everything we say here is secret, " Edwards said, "and just as well. However, " he added quietly, "we should guard our tongues."
He looked across at Gowers. "We'll consider our verdicts in a moment, but don't write your fair copy of the minutes until I give you the word." Then he asked the captains: "Have you any questions? Do you want Gowers to read the minutes of today's evidence? How about you, Teal?"
"I wish I was away on a cruise, " Teal muttered, as though the words forced their way from his mouth. "I wish I'd never heard a word of all this. I'll never trust a ship's company again! "
"Steady now! " Marden said. "Do you flog your men like Wallis did?"
"Of course not. A dozen lashes a month at most, and that's the same man who always gets regularly drunk: hoards his tot, knows he'll get a dozen if he's discovered, and regularly swills it down and then sits on the fo'c'sle in the lee of the belfry and sings bawdy songs at the bosun."
"Nothing wrong with a man who sings bawdy songs at a bosun, " Edwards muttered. "Now, Banks, we haven't heard much from you. Any legal questions?"
Banks, junior of all the captains except for Ramage, shook his head. He was a shy man and not a little overawed by Edwards. "I'm like Teal: it's hard to believe what we've just been hearing."
"You, Ramage, " Edwards said. "If you'd had any you'd have spoken up, eh?"
"Yes, sir. Some of my questions were aimed at helping me with the next operation."
"I noticed that. You'll have a copy of the minutes, though, and the Admiral's going to let you see the minutes of the other trials. We thought it wiser not to let you see them until we've reached a verdict on this one. Now, gentlemen, are you all ready to deliver your votes?"
A naval court martial was like the trial of a peer before the House of Lords, or the decision of the Privy Council: the junior voted first, followed by the rest in order of seniority, so that Edwards's vote would come last. The court's verdict would represent the majority of votes, and the system, so long a tradition, was intended to avoid a junior officer being influenced by a senior.
The four captains agreed they were ready.
"Read the charges again, Gowers, " Edwards said.
As soon as the deputy judge advocate had finished, the president said: "I shall first name the accused man and then you give your vote. This will be on all the charges, unless you choose to divide them up. Now, Ramage, I'll start with you. Do you find George Weaver guilty or not guilty?"
"Not guilty, sir."
"Do you find Albert Summers guilty or not guilty?"
"Guilty on all the charges." Guilty, Ramage thought, but not entirely responsible. Wallis had murdered himself; he had baited the men beyond endurance. He had killed some; the survivors had killed him. Yet the verdict provided only two choices, guilty or not guilty . . .
"Henry Perry?"
"Guilty on all the charges."
"Henry Harris?"
"Guilty on all the charges."
Gowers noted down Ramage's vote, and the next to be asked was Captain Teal, who hesitated over the first name. "Weaver admits he was guilty of 'concealing a mutinous design'."
Edwards shrugged his shoulders. "You are one of the judges, " he said. "Vote as your conscience tells you."
Ramage had already given a lot of thought to that single charge, but Weaver had turned King's evidence anyway. In a strict court of law the man was guilty of concealment, but he had no choice; Ramage believed him when he said his throat would have been cut if he raised the alarm.
"Not guilty, sir, " Teal said.
"Not guilty on all the charges, you mean."
"Not guilty on all the charges, sir."
The other captains voted in the same way - Weaver not guilty and the other three guilty - and after Captain Edwards had cast his vote he said formally: "The sentences for the three guilty men are covered by the Articles of War. They are mandatory and we can't change them. We all know the wording but Gowers had better read them out." He glanced at a paper in front of him. "They are Articles number three, fifteen, sixteen, nineteen, twenty-eight and thirty-six."
Gowers picked up a slim volume containing the Articles and began reading: "Article number three. If any officer, Marine, soldier or other person of the Fleet shall give, hold, or entertain intelligence with any enemy or rebel without leave from the King's Majesty ... or his commanding officer, every such person . . . shall be punished with death.
"Article number fifteen. Every person . . . who shall desert to the enemy, pirate or rebel, or run away with any of His Majesty's ships ... or any ordnance, ammunition, stores or provisions ... or yield up the same cowardly or treacherously . . . shall suffer death . . .
"Sixteen. Every person . . . who shall desert or entice others so to do, shall suffer death or such other punishment as the circumstances . . . shall deserve. . . . Nineteen. If any person . . . shall make . . . any mutinous assembly . . . and being convicted . . . shall suffer death . . .
"Twenty-eight. All murders committed by any person in the Fleet shall be punished with death . . . Thirty-six. All other crimes not capital . . . which are not mentioned in this Act . . . shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea."
As Gowers had read the Articles, Ramage had been making some notes. Four of the six Articles gave the court no choice: anyone found guilty had to be sentenced to death. The fifth gave death "or such other punishment"; the sixth, the Captain's Cloak, left it to the court. T
he five captains had found three of the men guilty; the law said, four times, that the sole penalty was death. There was no alternative.
"Bring in the prisoners, " Edwards said. "We need not prolong things, although all of them, except Weaver, know what to expect."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Next morning Ramage was rowed over to the Invincible. He had no stomach for questioning three men who, within a day or two, would be hoisted by the neck to the foreyardarm of the flagship, but it might eventually save lives on board the Calypso.
He was taken to Captain Edwards and found him gloomy, his face as dark as his cabin was light from the early sun. "Sit down, Ramage. I have the minutes of the other Jocasta trials here and you can read 'em before you talk to the prisoners. Are you feeling all right?" he asked suddenly.
"I don't enjoy this sort of thing very much, sir, " Ramage admitted.
Edwards glanced up, startled. "What do you mean - cutting out the Jocasta?”
"No, sir! Courts martial and questioning condemned men."
"That's reasonable enough. Nastiest trial I've ever seen - although I'd warned the Admiral, he was badly shaken when he read the minutes. Badly shaken, " he repeated. "He's worried in case we might have taken the questioning too far, where Wallis was concerned. I must admit he has a point. It didn't seem so at the time, but when you read the minutes . . ."
"I'd have thought it was unavoidable, sir."
Edwards shrugged his shoulders. "A case like this isn't straightforward, you know. Anyone reading those minutes - Their Lordships, for instance - are going to ask why Wallis wasn't warned to ease up . . ."
"Perhaps Sir Hyde didn't know."
Edwards stared at Ramage. "What do you really think, eh? Man to man . . ."
"I think he knew well enough, " Ramage said frankly. "He must have: he saw Wallis's journals and every flogging was recorded. He looked the other way. It could happen in someone else's fleet but not in one of his frigates."
"Exactly. He knew, and it was common gossip. Mind you, no one else knew just how bad it was."
"But why is Admiral Davis worried?"
"Because none of this evidence about Wallis came out in the other trials."
"A question of Sir Hyde's seniority, I suppose, " Ramage mused.
"Precisely. Sir Hyde is nearly at the top of the flag list and Admiral Davis is near the bottom ... Sir Hyde will probably protest to Their Lordships the moment he hears. He'll claim that Admiral Davis did it deliberately; that the court's questioning was intended to discredit him. He's a touchy sort of man, always looking for insults."
"But Admiral Davis wasn't responsible! " Ramage protested. "We asked the questions! "
"Don't worry, " Edwards said. "Our Admiral doesn't lack courage. Anyway, none of this helps you with Santa Cruz - but you realize what bringing the Jocasta back here would mean?"
Ramage grinned because Edwards was being perfectly frank now. "That Admiral Davis wouldn't have to worry overly about the effect of those minutes on Their Lordships." When Edwards nodded, Ramage could not help adding bitterly: "And Captain Eames would have nothing more to worry about, either."
Edwards inspected his fingernails for several moments. "Quite obviously I could never make any comment about a fellow officer serving on this station, but you are free to draw any conclusions you like. However, it would be unfortunate for all concerned, " he said quietly, looking directly at Ramage, "if a second attempt failed."
In other words, Ramage knew, Edwards was just repeating the gentle warning. Eames had already established that it was quite impossible to carry out the Admiralty's order to cut out the Jocasta, but another captain had to be saddled with the failure: Admiral Davis was protecting his favourite frigate captain.
But why pick on me? Ramage thought to himself. He had made the Admiral several thousand pounds richer from prize money, thanks to the captures off Martinique. Yet to be fair to the Admiral (however reluctantly), he had been picked because he was the newest arrival; someone to whom the Admiral owed no patronage or loyalty. Davis was shrewd enough to know that Ramage's stock would be high at the Admiralty once Their Lordships heard about the Martinique affair, and if the next report they received told them that Ramage had failed at Santa Cruz, perhaps it would balance out.
"You realize what else bringing back the Jocasta would mean?" Captain Edwards asked, and Ramage sensed he had guessed his thoughts.
"Glory for everyone, " he said sourly, and then added quickly as the thought had just struck him: "It would also make Eames look a fool."
Edwards nodded and then said: "That possibility hasn't yet occurred to the Admiral."
So Edwards had no time for Eames! "But has it occurred to Eames?" Ramage asked.
"No, nor will it. He'll be only too glad that you now have the job. It's a curious situation, " Edwards said. "You'll have to make the best of it. If you succeed - and I'm not flattering you when I say if anyone can, it's you - you'll have a patron for life in the Admiral. And me, too, if I ever reach a position I can do you a service. Now, you realize this conversation hasn't taken place. I've behaved most improperly as the Admiral's flag captain; you've said things that are best left unsaid. And I hope the air is a lot clearer! I'll leave you to go through those minutes. A copy of our trial minutes is on the top."
With that he left the cabin and Ramage started reading. Out of curiosity he began with the minutes of the trial completed yesterday.
"At a court martial, held on board His Majesty's ship Invincible in English Harbour, Antigua . . . the fourteenth of June and held by one adjournment the fifteenth of June . . . Present, Herbert Edwards, esquire, commanding officer of His Majesty's ship Invincible and second-in-command of His Majesty's ships and vessels upon the Windward and Leeward Islands station, president, and Captains J. Marden, E. Teal, J. Banks, N. Ramage . . ."
The first time he had ever been a member of a court martial, his name was on a document which concluded: ". . . the said Albert Summers, Henry Perry and Henry Harris, to be hanged by their necks until they are dead, at the yardarms of His Majesty's ship Invincible, and at such time as the Commander-in-Chief shall direct."
Many men had been killed in the past because he had given the orders which took his ship into action; many of the enemy were dead because of his orders to open fire; he had killed men himself with pistol and sword; but all of that was in the heat of battle with the knowledge that it was "Kill or be killed". This was so cold-blooded. Yet, as Southwick had said this morning before he left the Calypso: "Don't take on so: they knew that if they murdered they risked being stabbed with a Bridport dagger ..." That was true enough, and it was a case where the slang was appropriate. The Navy's tribute to the Dorset town of Bridport which made such fine quality hemp rope was to make "a Bridport dagger" another phrase for the hangman's noose.
Ramage picked up the minutes of the Barbados trial of Jocasta mutineers. It told him only what the accused men did; there was no hint of why. Nor did it mention any details that might help him off Santa Cruz. There was a mutiny, and the witness deposed that A did this and B did that and C did the other. No mention that some officers had survived and then been murdered by Harris. Ramage picked up the next set, from Jamaica, and they told the same scanty story: enough evidence to convict the accused - more than enough, there was no question of that - but no hint that the frigate was sailing in limbo and manned by seamen who felt themselves doomed at the hands of a mad captain.
Was Wallis really mad? Madness seemed remote, sitting in Edwards's neat cabin on board the Invincible in English Harbour, but how had it been on board Wallis's frigate? Did it give him pleasure to flog men, or did he genuinely think everyone on board, officers, Marines and seamen, was plotting against him? Either way he must have been mad: no sane man enjoyed ordering a flogging. Ramage put down the last of the minutes under a heavy paperweight. He had wasted half an hour and learned nothing from them. Or, rather, he had learned there was nothing to be learned, except that, however convincing the minut
es of a court martial might seem, they were unlikely to give even a hint of the real problem . . .
Ten minutes later he was down in the perpetual gloom of the lower deck where the three condemned men were secured, their wrists in irons and each of them sitting on the deck with his ankles secured by another set of irons, the bar of which went through a ringbolt in the planking. Three Marines guarded them, and Ramage told the lieutenant who had escorted him to tell them to stand back out of earshot.
He knelt on one knee beside Summers. "You recognize me, Summers?"
"Indeed I do, sir, you saved my life once."
For a moment Ramage, more than conscious that he was one of the five judges who had condemned the three prisoners to death, thought Summers was making a bitter joke; but the man was grinning and he meant it seriously. Ramage stared at him, trying to recall the face, knowing that for two days he had watched those features to see what they might reveal by a passing expression.
"I don't recall you, Summers; I'm sorry." It seemed right to apologize to a condemned seaman but "The Belette, sir: I was one of an 'undred men and we was only on board your Kathleen for a few hours. I been telling me mates about it but they don't believe me. Nah then, " he said happily, twisting to face Perry and Harris, "'ere's the gennelman himself and he can put me right if I tell a lie! "
With that he took a deep breath and launched off on his story: "There was the Belette up on the rocks under a cliff on the coast of Corsica and we'd all climbed on shore and taken over an empty castle - well, a big lookout tower - and barred it against the Frenchies when they arrived.
"Problem though, for Captain Ramage - he was a l'tenant then - is how he rescues us with his little cutter. Well, 'e gets up to all sorts of tricks and we bolt down the cliff, back on the wreck, and step on board the cutter like she was the Gosport Ferry, 'cos Mr Ramage has laid her alongside the wreck and is waiting for us, with the Frenchies blazing away from the top of the cliff like madmen! There, that's 'ow it was, wasn't it, sir?"
Ramage nodded, his thoughts in a whirl as memories of that desperate hour or two - carrying out his first orders in his first command - came swirling in. Southwick had been there, and Jackson, and ... so many. And among the hundred or so Belettes who swarmed on board and were taken down to Bastia had been Summers, not even a face in the crowd, and years later chance had put Summers on board the Jocasta . . .