by Dudley Pope
Aitken turned and reported to Ramage, who thought for a moment and then snapped out orders. “Renwick,” he told the Marine lieutenant, “get all these men at the guns lined up on the fo’c’sle, with your Marines surrounding them.”
Then, with his pistol covering the man in the black coat, he told Southwick: “Have all the Calypso’s grapnels unhooked and hauled inboard. As soon as she’s free I want Wagstaffe to get her clear and keep a gunshot to windward of us.”
He looked round for Jackson and waved him over. “Collect half a dozen men here.”
Then he turned to the man in the long black coat who was still standing there, calm and not a bit alarmed at having men from another ship swarming over the deck of his own ship; in fact, Ramage realized, the man had a strange remoteness, like an effigy in a church which had watched over the funerals, weddings and christenings for centuries and would continue until the church fell down, unless another Cromwell came along.
Ramage tucked the pistol in his belt and slid the cutlass back into the frog and deliberately looked the other man up and down. He said loudly to Aitken, aware that the words might well have to be remembered as evidence at a court of inquiry: “I wonder who this man is – you notice he is not wearing any sort of uniform. Green trousers, a long black coat, no hat…”
“Aye, sir,” Aitken said, realizing the point of Ramage’s remark. “There’s no telling who he is.”
“Come, sir,” Ramage said, “you have the advantage of me: you have guessed who I am, but I only know your ship has just been firing at mine.”
“Shirley, my dear Ramage, William Shirley at your service, a captain in the Royal Navy but lacking, I fear, your distinction.”
“You have your commission?” Ramage asked sharply.
“Oh yes indeed, it’s in a drawer in my desk. Shall we go down to my cabin and find it?”
“Later,” Ramage said. He wanted witnesses to all the conversation with this man. “Less than half an hour ago you approached my ship in the Jason flying the wrong challenge and then giving the wrong answer when my ship hoisted the correct challenge.”
“My dear fellow, you don’t say so?” Shirley seemed genuinely upset. “How careless of me. Still, no harm came of my omission, I’m glad to say.”
“No harm?” Ramage looked round at Aitken to make sure he had heard, and noticed that Jackson, Stafford and Rossi were among several other seamen who had, almost without realizing it, grouped round Shirley, covering him with their pistols. “You narrowly missed colliding with my ship and then fired a raking broadside into her. Do you call that ‘No harm’?”
“A raking broadside?” Shirley repeated in a puzzled voice. “My dear Ramage, you are mistaking the poor Jason for someone else. Why should we want to rake one of the King’s ships?”
“That’s the point of my questions,” Ramage said, adding heavily: “It is rather an unusual situation.”
“Yes, it would be,” Shirley agreed. “By the way, do I address you as ‘my Lord’ or just Ramage? I’ve heard it said you don’t use your title in the Service.”
“Ramage will do. Why did you open fire?”
Shirley shook his head sorrowfully, as though regretfully refusing some importunate request. “Must have been some other ship, my dear Ramage. Anyway, now we’ve settled that, I hope you can be persuaded to stay and dine with me. That is one of the complaints I have about the King’s Service: at sea and on foreign stations one does meet such a poor class of person, and that is why it’s such a pleasure to meet you.”
Ramage gestured to him. “Come with me.” He walked over to one of the starboard guns, ordered the crouching men to stand upright, and told the captain of the gun to step forward.
The man was in his early thirties, clean shaven, his hair tied in a neat queue. He had a green cloth tied round his forehead to absorb perspiration and did not wear a shirt above his white duck trousers.
“Name and rate?” Ramage asked.
“George Gooch, sir, rated able.”
“Very well, Gooch. Tell me, have you fired this gun today?”
The man glanced at Shirley, looked down at the deck and said woodenly: “No, sir; ain’t fired no gun.”
Ramage nodded towards Jackson, who walked to the muzzle and sniffed. “It’s been fired recently, sir. Inside half an hour.”
“What have you to say to that?” Ramage asked Gooch. The man shook his head and refused to look up.
Ramage took Shirley’s arm. “Come, Mr Shirley, let’s examine that muzzle ourselves.”
“By all means.” He stood back a pace and made a sweeping gesture indicating that Ramage should lead the way.
Ramage bent down at the muzzle. The smell of burnt powder was unmistakable. He pointed. “Smell that,” he told Shirley.
The man clasped his hands behind his back and bent forward. He inclined his body, Ramage thought, like the patient parent leaning over to listen to a mumbling child.
“Well?” Ramage demanded.
“I can smell nothing, but I have a poor sense of smell anyway.”
Aitken and Southwick had come down the other side of the gun.
“This one has been fired; those on the larboard side haven’t, sir,” Southwick said firmly. “I’ll check all these on the starboard side.” With that he turned and made his way along the row of guns, ducking under barrels and holding his sword clear, sniffing at the muzzles like a terrier at rabbit holes.
“Please wait with these men,” Ramage told Shirley and gestured to Jackson to guard him. He noted that Kenton was standing by the men at the wheel giving them orders while Martin was busy with a party of men, helping bear off the Calypso.
With Aitken beside him he made for the officers’ cabins.
“What do you make of it, sir?” a bewildered Aitken asked. “Seems like a dream to me: each time you reach out to touch something you find it has no substance, as though everything was made of smoke.”
“And we’re trying to shovel it,” Ramage said sympathetically. “But no, I haven’t anything more than a suspicion. Captain Shirley looks crazy enough to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Have you noticed he’s not perspiring under that black coat?”
“He’s not moving very much, either, sir,” Aitken pointed out.
Ramage led the way down the companionway, blinking for a few moments in the half-light. But within five paces of the gunroom, a burly Marine lunged forward with a musket and bellowed: “Halt, who goes there?”
Ramage stopped and inquired in a quiet, polite voice: “Who are you expecting?”
“That’s none of your business,” the man snarled, taking another pace forward.
“Do you recognize my uniform?” Ramage asked, his voice still low. “And the officer beside me?”
“Aye, I recognize both uniforms but they don’t mean nothing to me. Captain Shirley’s the only one I take orders from.”
“Not even from the Marine captain or lieutenant commanding your detachment?”
“’Specially not ’im; ’e’s one o’ them.”
“Who are ‘they’?” Ramage inquired sympathetically.
“That lot in there,” the Marine said, turning and pointing with his musket. He turned back to find Ramage’s pistol aiming at his right shoulder, the eye looking along the barrel deep-set, brown, and as far as he could see, without a glimmer of mercy in it.
“Tell me,” Ramage said, “don’t you think it would be a wise insurance to take your right hand away from the trigger and then hand your musket over to the lieutenant standing beside me?”
The man’s right hand came clear; he was making the movement unmistakable. He gave the musket to Aitken as though presenting a large bunch of flowers.
“Where are the other Marines?” Ramage demanded.
“Dunno, sir. On deck, I ’spect. I’m not due to be relieved for ’bout half an hour, I reckon.”
“Who are you guarding in there?”
The Marine looked puzzled, as though Ramage’s question was one ev
en an imbecile could answer.
Ramage, feeling himself near the answer to the whole puzzle, jabbed his pistol for emphasis, wanting to hear what the sentry had to say before blundering into the half-darkness of the gunroom, whose occupants were regarded as dangerous enough to require a Marine guard.
“Guarding, sir?” The man misunderstood his meaning, and Ramage realized the two senses in which the word could be used, to protect, or to prevent escaping. “Well, sir, they’re all in there; the whole bloody lot.”
“Damnation, man, who are ‘the whole bloody lot’?”
“Why, sir, all the commission and warrant officers. Them wot mutinied!”
Commission and warrant officers mutinying? Against a captain who was walking the quarterdeck wearing a long black coat and denying that every gun in his starboard broadside had just raked the Calypso? Aitken was right: all this had the insubstantial atmosphere of a dream! If only he could wake up and find the Jason, the man in the black coat and the gunroom full of alleged mutineers had all vanished, and his steward had brought him a cup of proper coffee bought in Barbados, whence it had been smuggled from somewhere on the Spanish Main.
But this was no dream: he was down below in the Jason with his pistol held at the head of a Marine who was startled to find that Ramage did not know the gunroom was full of mutinous officers.
Aitken, realizing that Ramage intended to walk into the gunroom, said hurriedly: “Wait, sir, I’ll get Rennick and a brace of our Marines. They can flush them out. Come with me,” he said sharply to the Marine, gesturing with the musket, and disappearing up the companionway.
Ramage, left alone, listened to the slap of the water against the hull – he should have given orders for the Jason to be hove-to, before she and the Calypso were carried too far to leeward of the convoy. And those two newly promoted captains – would they protect the convoy while he was away? Supposing French privateers out of Guadeloupe suddenly attacked, just a couple of them from different directions: would La Robuste and L’Espoir be able to drive them off? They were powerful and weatherly enough, but no ship was better than her captain. And anyway, the commander of the convoy was standing in half darkness outside a gunroom door, waiting for some Marines to act as good shepherds.
Yet Aitken was right: he was the commander of the convoy, not the leader of a boarding party, and if the convoy came to any harm, Their Lordships would quite reasonably want to know what the devil he was doing.
He stuck the pistol back in his belt, suddenly conscious that his wrist ached from holding it. Damn and blast, all he wanted to do was get this wretched convoy safely back to England and find out what had happened to Sarah. The devil take frigates commanded by men who looked like run-amok prelates in long black coats and whose gunroom (according to a Marine sentry) was full of mutinous officers.
Supposing the captain was not mad. Supposing, instead, that the officers had mutinied. What happened now? Captain Ramage had the responsibility of sorting it all out, along with nursing his convoy, and he owed the Yorkes a dinner, he thought irrelevantly, but found he liked thinking about them. Sidney owned a fleet of merchant ships that were among the best kept and best sailed at sea today, and he was an amusing, erudite and lively host, apart from having become one of Ramage’s closest friends. Strange how he had so few friends. Yet not so strange really, because most of his adult life had been spent at sea, where the only people he met were naval officers (with the exception of Sidney).
A clattering on the companion ladder heralded Aitken, followed by Rennick, Southwick (his great sword in hand), Sergeant Ferris and several Marines. Ramage moved back a few steps to make room for them all, and to avoid explanation and any more delay, pulled both pistols from his belt, cocked them and then kicked open the flimsy door of the gunroom, striding in with the shout: “No one move!”
No one moved because the gunroom itself was empty: the table in the centre was bare, there was a form at each of the long sides and a chair at either end, and all round were the doors of the officers’ cabins. Hats hung on hooks over several of them, and there were empty racks which normally held swords, telescopes and pistols. But in view of the heat, it was significant that all the doors were shut. Ramage stood by the table until the men behind him had come into the gunroom, pistols and cutlasses at the ready.
Rennick’s whole stance showed that he considered this was a job for the Marines, and remembering how there had been no work for them as sharpshooters, Ramage told him: “All right, look into the cabins one at a time, starting at that end.”
Rennick did not wait for Ferris or one of the Marines: instead he stepped forward quickly, pistol in his left hand, and flung the door open. Inside a man crouched on a small, folding stool that took up the space left by the cot and small chest of drawers.
“Out!” Rennick snarled, “slowly, with your hands clasped in front of you.”
The deckhead was too low for a man to hold up his arms: everyone in the gunroom was having to crouch, and Ramage pulled round a chair and sat down. Whatever was going on, there would be no violence. The officer now coming out of the cabin which was neatly labelled “1st Lt” looked as if he had not slept for a month nor changed his clothes.
“Sit here,” Ramage said, pointing to the form on his left. “If you are the Jason’s first lieutenant, tell me your name and explain why you are skulking in your cabin.”
“Ridley, sir.”
“That answers my first question…
The man ran a finger along the grain of the deal table but avoided looking up at Ramage, who examined the man’s pale and unshaven face closely.
“Ridley,” he said quietly, “you haven’t been up on deck for two or three weeks.” He recalled the man’s stiff gait. “And I doubt if you’ve been out of your cabin, either. Why?”
“My duties kept me down here,” the man said sheepishly, his eyes still fixed on the table.
Ramage pointed to the next door.
Rennick flung it open and another man came out. Ramage glanced up at the lettering over the door and waved the man to sit next to Ridley.
“Are you the third lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. Owens. Henry Owens.”
“And what are you doing in your cabin at a time like this?”
“Captain’s orders, same as Mr Ridley.”
“When were you last on deck?”
“I…er, I’m not sure, sir. Within the last two or three weeks, I think.”
Ramage sighed and looked up at Southwick. “Is everything all right on deck?” When the master nodded, Ramage signalled to Rennick, who opened the door over which was written “Master”.
The Jason’s master was, Ramage noted in amusement, the opposite to Southwick in just about every way: he was tall, thin to the point of being cadaverous, completely bald – his head seemed to be polished like the ivory top of a Malacca cane – and his nose was not just long but tilted up, as though something should be hung on it.
“If you’re the master, tell me your name and the date of your warrant,” Ramage said wearily, and then felt a finger poking into his side. He looked up to find Southwick signalling that he wanted to whisper something.
“I know this fellow,” the master whispered. “A good man.”
Ramage looked at the man questioningly. “Well?”
“Price, sir. Warrant dated August 1793.”
“Very well, go with Southwick – I believe you know him. Take your hat, the sun’s still bright.”
As Price collected his hat and then followed Southwick out of the gunroom, Ramage said impatiently: “All right, Mr Rennick, winkle out the rest of ’em – the second lieutenant, surgeon and purser, I believe.” He raised his voice, so that they could all hear. “I’m getting tired of all this play-acting. None of you seem to realize you’re probably going to spend the next few weeks in irons.”
The first lieutenant’s head jerked up. “But sir!”
“But sir, what?” Ramage demanded, hoping to provoke him into revealing some de
tails. “Do I need to remind you of the Articles of War? Numbers 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 come immediately to mind, but no doubt 19, 20 and 22 could apply. You’ll recall that most of them end up with the phrase ‘shall suffer death’.”
“But…but well, it’s not like that, sir,” Ridley wailed.
“What is it like, then?”
“Oh, I can’t say!” the man said and, collapsing on the table with his arms clasped over his head, he burst into uncontrolled tears.
Ramage stood up, feeling completely helpless, and said formally to Rennick: “All these officers are under arrest and confined to the gunroom.”
“The captain, sir?”
Ramage tried to look stern, although he felt more sympathy for the sobbing Ridley than it would have been proper to admit. “I’ll decide about him later, after I’ve had a chance to talk with him.”
Chapter Ten
Back on board the Calypso, with the Jason abeam as the two ships beat back towards the convoy, Ramage tried to make up his mind. There was a choice: although he had by no means finished questioning the Jason’s officers and ship’s company, he was still just near enough to take the Jason back to Barbados and hand over the whole wretched and puzzling business to Admiral Tewtin. Or he could keep the Jason with him, carry on with the convoy, and hope to get it all settled in England.
If there were six reasons why he should do one thing, there were half a dozen why he should do the other – and that was only choosing between returning to Barbados or going on to England.
There were plenty of variations lurking around to distract him. He could escort the Jason back to Barbados with the Calypso, leaving La Robuste and L’Espoir to carry on with the convoy and arranging a rendezvous for, say, a week’s time. (But what hope was there of clearing up this business in a week? Tewtin would want dozens of depositions: Shirley, if he had any sense, would want even more. Very well, forget that choice.)
What about sending the Jason back to Barbados with, say, La Robuste, giving her captain a written report for Rear-Admiral Tewtin? How the devil could he describe all this in a written report that was not as long as the Regulations and Instructions, the largest volume a King’s ship carried? And what yarn was Shirley (and his officers, whatever their role was) likely to tell, if Ramage and the Calypsos were out of sight and sound, even if not out of mind? Shirley could have the Calypso raking the Jason, and those officers of his would probably back him up, judging from the story Southwick brought back after his talk with the Jason’s master.