Ramage and the Renegades

CHAPTER SEVEN

The first few miles on a voyage which would take them a quarter of the way round the world were bound to be the most tiresome, Ramage thought. The wind was light from the southwest when they dropped the moorings off the dockyard, and with topsails drawing there was enough strength in it to carry them over the last of the flood: the Calypso's smooth bottom, newly coppered, more than made up for the fact that with extra provisions and three months' water she was floating lower on her marks than at any time since she was first captured.

Ramage disliked sailing down a river on a tide which would be falling before he was a quarter of the way to the entrance: going aground meant the ship would stick for a whole tide. Sailing with the flood, on the other hand, meant waiting a few minutes and the ship would float off. . .

The Medway was the worst of the rivers the King's ships normally navigated: it twisted and turned every few hundred yards between banks of mud and acres of saltings, across which snipe jinked and startled duck quacked, watched by seamen who pictured them plucked and roasted.

Southwick had a chart spread over the top of the binnacle box and held down by weights. The men at the wheel and the quartermaster were not concerned with the compass as Southwick tried to pick out where the channel lay in stretches of water that were greenish-brown and gave no indication of the depths.

Aitken, speaking-trumpet in hand, kept the men busy trimming the sails to every change of course; yards were braced, sheets hauled or slacked. A seaman standing in the chains heaved the lead and sang out the depths in a lugubrious monotone, but everyone knew the ship would be hard aground before anyone could react to shoaling.

'Not far to Sheerness now, sir,' Southwick said. He had long since taken off his hat, and the wind ruffling his white hair once again reminded Ramage of a mop. 'That's Hoo Fort on our larboard beam, and Darnett Ness on our starboard bow.' He gestured to a tiny island marooned in a depressing stretch of sea and which, at low water, would be reduced to a knob amid a vast stretch of smelly mud.

'Once we round the Ness, we pass Bishop Ooze to starboard, and Half Acre Creek joins us. Beats me where they get the names from. Past the Ness we're in Kethole Reach. I wonder if it was once "Kettle"? Then we come into Saltpan Reach. Oh, just look at that. . .'

Southwick delivered one of his prodigious, disapproving sniffs, and Ramage, who was thinking of a woman with black hair in a carriage on the Paris road, gave a start and looked ahead. At least four Thames barges were coming up Kethole Reach. For the moment he could see only the big rectangular sails, a deep red ochre from the red lead and linseed oil with which they were painted.

'Don't give 'em an inch, sir,' Southwick said. 'I know they're beating and we're running, but they only draw about four feet laden. If there's dew on the grass a barge can float! They can sail in to the bank until they see the leeboard lifting as it touches bottom, and then tack with plenty to spare. Don't forget we're drawing sixteen and a half feet aft, sir.'

Aitken had walked over to stand beside Southwick, as though to lend his weight to the master's comments.

'The trouble with you,' Ramage said, keeping an eye on the sails, 'you're afraid they'll scratch your paintwork!'

'Scratch the paint!' Southwick snorted. 'If they're laden with stone, they'd stove in planks, and I'm sick of that dockyard!'

Ramage noticed that the barges had tacked one after the other so they were now sailing diagonally across the river, their hulls hidden beyond the bend. They were on the starboard tack, steering south, each great sprit holding out the sail like a matador's sword extending his red cape.

'Sir, the channel's but forty yards wide here; you remember coming up to Chatham we had to club haul and even then touched.'

Ramage glanced at the chart and said mildly to the master: 'You really mustn't be a bully, Mr Southwick. Just because we're so big, we can't just force barges aground. They've got a living to make. A man and a boy and a dog handling a vessel eighty feet long - more, some of them.'

The barges were in line ahead now. At first glance this was not obvious, because the gap between each of them varied, but Ramage decided to continue for a few more minutes. Aitken was looking worried now but turned away to shout orders for sail trimming as Southwick gave a new direction to the quartermaster - and the wheel turned a few spokes.

'It's soft mud, anyway,' Ramage said dreamily. 'We'd sit snug as a duck until the tide made again.'

'But sir!' Southwick was certain that worrying about the Marchesa had temporarily deranged the captain. 'The sides of the channel slope; if we ground we'll slide and probably roll over as the tide leaves us!'

'The Good Lord will provide,' Ramage said, 'you forget we have a chaplain now.'

'Sir - those barges can sit on the mud: they're flat bottomed and built to dry out. . .'

By now the first barge was bearing away a point, having been allowing for the ebb, and shooting up Half Acre Creek. Southwick, alarmed by his captain and keeping a sharp eye on the river bank each side, with its unappetizing expanse of mud, had not looked ahead again.

The second barge shot into the Creek. Aitken spotted it and turned quickly, about to tell Ramage. He caught sight of Ramage's face and grinned, turning away to face forward again.

'I really can't be responsible, sir,' Southwick protested. 'We ought to have an anchor ready. Those four barges are so close to each other we don't have a snowball in hell's chance of getting through without hitting one of them.'

The third barge went into Half Acre Creek and Ramage said: 'The war is over, Mr Southwick. We can't bully these poor bargemen. I'd be court-martialled if we sank one!'

'Sir, sir,' Southwick said desperately, 'you'll be court-martialled if you damage this ship and delay the expedition - God bless my soul!'

Southwick had glanced up and found Kethole Reach clear of sails as the last barge went into the Creek. He turned to Ramage, a sheepish grin on his face. 'Sorry, sir, you fooled me! Did you know they were going into Half Acre Creek?'

'No, but I thought they might,' Ramage admitted. 'They can make a couple of tacks, then come out again after we've passed.'

Once past the entrance to Half Acre Creek the Medway widened as Sheerness came in sight to starboard and the flat expanse of the Isle of Grain stretched away to larboard, a rough green and brown carpet of marshes and saltings and mudflats that reached across to the banks of the Thames.

'Looks as though we could anchor for the night off Warden Point, after getting in the powder,' Southwick said. 'We'll be close by the entrance of the Four Fathom Channel, ready for an early start tomorrow, and there'll be enough moon later on for the watchkeepers to see the cliffs between East End and the Point.'

Ramage nodded. 'We must be one of the few ships ever to sail on the proper day after a refit.'

By dawn the Calypso was steering along the north Kent coast under all plain sail with a brisk westerly breeze and an almost calm sea. The Great Nore and the Thames narrowing on its way through Sea Reach and up to London were astern. Southwick ticked off the bays and the towns, and Ramage was reminded of his days as a young midshipman.

St Mildred's Bay and then Margate; Palm Bay and then Long Nose Spit, with Foreness Point making the northern end of Botany Bay and White Ness the southern. Ramage called Paolo to his side and pointed out the North Foreland, the northeastern tip of Kent, unimpressive under a watery sun to a youth who could compare it with Tuscany or some of the West Indian islands.

The Calypso then turned south to steer through the Gulf Stream, leaving the Goodwin Sands to larboard. The yards were braced up, tacks and sheets hauled, and the frigate began to pitch slightly with the two men at the wheel watching the luffs of the sails as carefully as the quartermaster and Martin, who was officer of the deck.

Ramage occasionally pointed out places of interest as the frigate sailed the fourteen miles between the North and the South Foreland, which was the official name of the famous 'White cliffs of Dover'. Seas breaking well beyond the larboard beam showed the main banks of the Goodwin Sands while on the other side of the shore was Deal, nestling amid the shingle behind the Downs, which was the favourite anchorage for ships waiting for bad weather to ease before beginning the long beat down Channel.

A cast of the log showed the Calypso making eight knots, and soon they were hardening in sheets as the frigate passed Dover and bore up for Dungeness, the wedge of flat land, a mixture of beach and marsh, forming the southeastern corner of the country.

With Folkestone abeam to starboard, Ramage pointed to the long, low, grey shape on the horizon to larboard. 'You can see the French coast,' he told Paolo. "There's Calais.'

Jackson was the quartermaster and standing only a few feet away. Ramage's mind went back to the time when he had received orders from the Admiralty to see how near the French were to launching an invasion, and the only way of finding out was to go to France. He had enlisted the help of smugglers and gone to France with Jackson, Stafford and Rossi. The smuggler who risked his life for them had, ironically, been a deserter who had once served with Ramage.

'I wonder if "Slushy" Dyson still smuggles out of Folkestone,' he said to Jackson.

'I was just thinking the same thing, sir; we must be crossing the wake of that boat of his. Probably a rich man by now, with a big estate!'

'Not "Slushy" - if you remember, he was born under an unlucky star.'

Jackson peered down at the compass on the weather side and then at the luffs of the topsails. 'Not so unlucky really, sir. He should have been hanged for mutiny, but I seem to remember you gave him a couple of dozen lashes and transferred him to another ship!'

Ramage laughed at the memory. 'Just as well I did; if he hadn't become a smuggler we might never have got back from France!'

By now Paolo, all ears, was begging to be told the story, but Ramage shook his head. 'Too many ships for us to watch. Every fishing boat must be out, and you saw how many merchant ships were pouring out of the Thames. No more convoys now; the first ship at the market place gets the highest prices!'

Paolo, telescope tucked under his arm, tanned and far from the nervous youngster Ramage had first taken to sea (as a grudging gesture to Gianna, he had to admit), said: 'I've never seen so many ships scattered across the sea, sir. But this is the first occasion I've ever been to sea in peacetime!'

'You get just as cold and wet and tired,' Ramage said, 'with many more chances of collisions.'

'And no chance of action,' Paolo said sadly. 'No more actions, no more prizes ...'

Ramage spoke quietly as he said: 'For a while, anyway. Remember, we were trying to persuade your aunt to stay in England.'

With that Paolo cheered up. 'Yes, sir; I suppose we should consider this a holiday. Is that one of the packet boats?' he asked, pointing to a schooner crossing ahead.

Ramage looked at it with his telescope. 'Yes, the Dover-Calais packet. Started again after being stopped for eight years.'

The wind remained steady in strength and direction and Ramage tacked the Calypso as they approached within six miles of Fécamp, easily recognizable because it sat in a gap in the cliffs. The frigate could comfortably steer north by west, and by nightfall they tacked to south by west as the Owers, off Selsey Bill, came abeam. Ramage's only concession to peace was that the Calypso had four lookouts on deck at night, one on each bow and each quarter, instead of the six of wartime. With so many ships sailing up and down Channel, the risk of collision was considerable, and the Calypso, with a newly coppered bottom, new sails and well trained ship's company, was probably one of the fastest. This meant she faced the added risk of overtaking some merchant ship lumbering along without lights and running into her stern. Which, Ramage thought gloomily, would mean carrying away the Calypso's jibboom and bowsprit, and that in turn would send the foremast by the board . . .

Southwick, after filling in the new course and the time, put the slate back in the binnacle drawer and, as if guessing Ramage's mood, walked over and said: 'It's like hopping across Whitehall with your eyes shut, isn't it, sir? I'd forgotten what peacetime was like. Still, war can be worse: I remember once in a ship of the line finding myself in the middle of a West India convoy one night. More than one hundred ships, we found out afterwards.'

To Ramage it had all the qualities of a nightmare: far more dangerous than battle. A ship of the line could cut a merchant ship in half; with the bowsprits of a couple of merchant ships caught in her shrouds she could lose her masts. 'What did you do?'

'Ah, Sir Richard Strachan was the captain.' Southwick laughed at the memory. 'I was only a passenger but I happened to be on deck, and so was Sir Richard. A pitch-black night; we hadn't seen a ship for a week. Suddenly we hear shouts nearby and sails flapping. Then our lookouts start shouting; a ship on each bow and one on our larboard beam - all crossing from the starboard side. You know what a cusser Sir Richard is: well, he cusses, but in a trice he has the foretopsail back and we heave-to on the larboard tack and start burning blue flares. That was quick thinking, I must say: we hadn't a hope of seeing and dodging all those merchant ships; but we were so big that once they saw us - we must have looked a splendid sight, all lit up with those flares - they could do the dodging. It must have taken an hour for them to pass us, and there was Sir Richard with the speaking-trumpet swearing at every one that came within hail.'

'He can swear,' Ramage commented.

'We could hardly stand for laughing, sir. "Here's another one, sir," the first lieutenant would say, and if she was going to pass ahead Sir Richard would run up on the fo'c'sle, jam the speaking-trumpet to his mouth and bellow at the master something like "Call yourself a man of God, do you? You look more like Satan to me!"

The wind veered slowly northwest during Saturday night and by dawn on Sunday the Calypso was making nine knots, steering southwest, and Ramage intended to make his departure from Ushant. It was more usual to keep to the north, so that the Lizard was likely to be the last sight of land for a ship's company. The danger of being far enough south to use Ushant was that a sudden gale usually made it a lee shore, but the weather was set fair.

Hammocks were lashed and stowed; the ship's company had eaten breakfast; Ramage had carried out the usual Sunday morning inspection of ship and men. The smell of paint was at last disappearing. Ordering the wind sails to be rigged had helped - the tall cylinders of canvas, the tops open and winged and used in the Tropics to funnel a breeze down the hatches, had forced a strong draught through the ship which had made men shiver, but it had cleared the air.

Finally the order was given 'Rig Church'. Long wooden forms, used by the men to sit at the tables on the lowerdeck, were brought up to the quarterdeck, a chair was carried up from Ramage's cabin and put in front. A large Union flag was draped over the binnacle box, which was to serve as the altar. The quartermaster would not be able to look at the compass until the service was over.

Down in his cabin Ramage changed his shoes - his steward always had his newest pair, fitted with the heavy silver buckles, ready for the Sunday service. Ramage wondered where they spent the rest of the week. He stood still while the steward fitted the sword belt, and then slipped the sword into the frog. Just as he was looking round for his hymn book and prayer book, the Marine sentry reported the first lieutenant's approach.

Aitken came into the cabin. 'All ready for you, sir. The chaplain is holding a bundle of papers as thick as a pound loaf. I hope they aren't the notes for his sermon.'

'You haven't forgotten what I said?'

'No, sir,' Aitken said with a grin. 'And the wind is freshening.'

Ramage walked across the deck and sat down in his chair, facing aft. The chaplain stood immediately behind the binnacle, just in front of the two men at the wheel. The Marines under Renwick were drawn up across the after end of the quarterdeck; most of the ship's company were sitting on the forms. As usual Catholics sat among the Church of England men; Methodists sat near the front and John Smith the Second stood to one side with his fiddle. The ship's officers sat on a form to one side. Ramage thought that at a time when a prime minister had resigned because he disagreed with the King over religion, it would do them all good to see practical religion functioning in a ship of war. Most captains knew that sailors liked a good sing; two hundred voices seizing on to a rousing hymn, with John Smith's fiddle to help them along, did the men good. More important, as far as the Navy was concerned, the way men sang hymns told an intelligent captain if he had a happy or a discontented ship's company.

Stokes, watching Ramage sit down, clasped his hands as if in prayer, but there was something odd about the man. His surplice was not only creased but filthy: not the smears of some recent encounter with a dirty object but the greyness of grime: it had not been washed for months. And the man was standing strangely. The Calypso, on the starboard tack, was rolling with a slightly larger dip to larboard. Men standing on deck were tensing and flexing their knees to remain upright, but Stokes had the wrong rhythm: he was like a single stalk of corn that moved against the wind while all the others bowed away from it.

Ramage glanced across at Southwick, who was watching the chaplain closely, but none of the lieutenants had noticed anything. The man's voice was blurred but punctuated by the hiss of passing swell waves, the creak of yards overhead, and the thud and flap of a sail momentarily losing the wind and then filling again with a thump that jerked sheet and brace.

Stokes announced a hymn, John Smith tucked his fiddle under his chin and poised the bow. Stokes lifted a hand, John Smith scratched the opening bars and the ship's company, standing and swaying with the roll like the field of corn Ramage had pictured, bellowed away happily. Most of them knew the entire hymn by heart, and Stokes was beating time with his left hand. Not the time for the hymn and its music, Ramage noted; rather as though he was a tallyman counting as sheep ran through a gate.

There was still a little warmth in the sun but measurable only because of the chill when the increasing number of clouds hid it. The sea was a darker blue now as the Calypso approached the Chops of the Channel and deeper sea. The ship's company was going to be lucky this year: there would be no winter for them. With more than a hint of autumn in England, they would within hours be turning south, towards the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator, before stopping just short of the Tropic of Capricorn. Ramage doubted if many of the men had ever crossed the Equator. As far as he was concerned, the ship could not get back to the Tropics fast enough. Admittedly he had returned to England after several months in the Mediterranean, but after the Tropics, the Mediterranean seemed a wretched climate: scorching hot and windless in summer, without the constant cooling breeze of the trade winds, and bitterly cold in winter, though never a Spaniard, Frenchman or Italian would admit it, building his house as though there was always sun, and the bitter wind of winter did not blow through, chilling marble floors so that, even as far south as Rome, men and women hobbled about like lame ducks, almost crippled by chilblains. The trade winds made the West Indies as near Paradise as Ramage could imagine; and providing one avoided yellow fever which killed, and rum, which wounded first. . .

He stopped daydreaming as Stokes announced his text for the day. It was, he said, from Romans, chapter fourteen, verse eight: 'If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?'

A curious text. In fact twenty or thirty seamen were openly laughing: whatever else they might consider the captain lacked, Ramage guessed it was not an uncertain sound when the time came to prepare for battle. That was assuming that Stokes had the sense to preach a sermon remembering he was talking to seamen, to whom 'battle' meant 'battle' and not some philosophical state of readiness.

Stokes began talking rapidly, like a nervous child reciting something in front of grownups, something little understood so that all the pauses for breath came at the wrong time and punctuation was ignored.

Southwick glanced across at Ramage: a look that said, without equivocation: 'I told you so.'

Well, the man was half drunk; Ramage was prepared to admit that, but he was also prepared to overlook it on this occasion, because a new chaplain could be forgiven for being nervous when conducting his first service.

Out of habit, Ramage glanced at his watch and slipped it back into his fob pocket. The wind was holding from the northwest; almost a soldier's wind to round Ushant and stand across the Bay of Biscay, heading for the Spanish Finisterre. It was going to take months to get used to the idea that every ship sighted was a friend. For so many years the lookout's hail of a sail in sight was the beginning of a sequence which involved identification and then, if French, chase and battle and, if British, the challenge and exchange of the private signals for the day and hoisting of the three-figure pendant numbers by which each ship in the King's service could be identified by name.

Stokes was not only gabbling but he was doing it in a monotone. Ramage concentrated on listening to the words. After what seemed an hour, he looked again at his watch. Stokes had been talking for five minutes, and he kept referring to 'whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth', as though that was his text. Ramage again concentrated. Certainly there was no reference to trumpets giving uncertain sounds or anyone preparing for battle, but there was a great deal about punishing only those one loved; that one demanded higher standards from loved ones, and chastened them if they fell below them.

As Ramage reached for his watch again, he realized what had happened: Stokes was quoting from one of the two dozen sermons he had bought. Because the captain had forbidden him to use them, he had learned one by rote, or near enough, so he would seem to be speaking without notes and apparently directly from the heart. The only trouble was that he was preaching the sermon he had learned, but he had announced the text from another - presumably the next on the pile.

The watch showed the man had been talking for ten minutes. Ramage saw Aitken was also holding his watch and looking across at him.

Ramage stood up. 'Mr Aitken, I'll trouble you to take a reef in the foretopsail!'

The first lieutenant leapt up, shouting: 'Topmen, look alive you topmen! Afterguard lay aft - come on, fo'c'slemen, I don't see you moving!'

Southwick leapt up and jammed his hat on his head. 'Clear the binnacle,' he roared, 'get that flag off so we can get a sight of the compass!'

'Watch your heading!' Jackson shouted at the men at the wheel, unceremoniously pushing the chaplain to one side and helping to increase the confusion. He had more than a suspicion of what was going on, having seen the exchange of glances between the captain and first lieutenant. 'Damnation, you're a full point off course!' He winked at the men before they had time to heave on the spokes of the wheel.

Renwick had been too far aft to see what was going on and had never listened to a sermon in his life, having in childhood perfected the art of sleeping while looking awake, but he realized that pandemonium was required, and instead of marching his men forward and dismissing them on the gangway, he shouted: 'Marines - at the double, fall out!' Three dozen Marines in heavy boots suddenly began running forward in a cloud of white pipeclay which their movement crumbled off their crossbelts.

The bosun's mates were soon busy, repeating orders after the piercing trill of their calls. Topmen leapt over forms, knocking several over as they ran to the shrouds.

The Reverend Percival Stokes, unsure what was happening, wisely crouched down behind the binnacle, reminding Southwick of a frightened whippet cowering behind its kennel. Beside him a seaman was calmly folding the big Union flag, careful to line up the previous creases.

By now Ramage, still standing beside his chair, looked over the starboard quarter and then up at the sky. 'What do you think, Mr Southwick? That squall will pass us to windward, eh?'

'You're probably right, sir. By a mile, I think.'

'At least a mile. Mr Aitken! Belay that last pipe! Get these forms stowed below, and then you can pipe "Hands to dinner".' With that Ramage strode to the companionway and went down to his cabin, and Stokes finally bobbed up in the sudden silence, lifted his surplice and scurried below.

Ten minutes later, after Ramage had passed the word for them, Aitken and Southwick reported to his cabin. In answer to Ramage's wave, Southwick subsided into the single armchair with the contented groan of a man whose back ached and Aitken sat on the settee, very upright at first until he realized this was to be an informal visit, when he leaned back.

'Drunk and a filthy surplice,' Ramage said.

'And smelling like an overworked dray horse, sir,' Aitken added. 'The gunroom reeks like a stable.'

'Did either of you notice anything about the sermon?'

'He's learned it by rote,' Aitken said quickly. 'If he'd had to stop, I'll bet he couldn't have got started again.'

'Aye, and the sermon had precious little to do with the text he announced,' Southwick added. 'He said it was about the trumpet giving an uncertain sound, but even tho' I'm a free thinker I'd have sworn it should have been that line about "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth". I know it well; my father always quoted it, nigh on sixty years ago, when he laid on half a dozen across my buttocks with his belt. I always waited for his trousers to fall down. They never did.'

Both Southwick and Aitken watched Ramage. Southwick had served under him for many years, starting the day the young lieutenant was given his first command, the Kathleen cutter, by Commodore Nelson. What always struck him was that as an inexperienced young lieutenant or one of the best frigate captains in the Navy today, even though in terms of seniority his name was almost at the bottom of the post list, Mr Ramage was never indecisive. He collected all the facts, seemed to shake them up in a dice cup, and throw the answer across the green baize table. So far it had always been the right answer, with the result that his officers and ship's company had suffered few casualties in battle and collected a good deal of prize money.

Southwick had been surprised, when news reached Chatham Dockyard that the Treaty had been signed and Britain was at peace with France, that at least a quarter of the ship's company had not asked for their discharge. Ships would be paying off by the dozen, and the seamen who had served with Mr Ramage could go home to a tidy pile of money; enough to set up a small business, open a shop in their village, pay for a small house.

While the captain was in London on leave some had even come to Southwick to discuss it, and as soon as he was back on board many of them had asked to see Mr Ramage, and Southwick knew they were just making sure the master's advice was sound. Both master and captain, however, had said the same thing: that they thought the peace would be brief and the men risked being hauled back by the pressgang in a year's time . . . Neither he nor the captain had said, in as many words, that there would be no chance of them serving together again. For all that, each man had apparently weighed it up for himself: on one side a year's leave with money to spend, but ending up fighting another war in another ship, and on the other the wish to serve under Captain Ramage and his officers and with the same ship mates, but at the cost of a year's liberty.

Southwick disliked tale-bearing and he hated sycophants, but he was in some respects a jealous man: he was jealous of anything concerning his ship and anything concerning his captain. Jealous or, some might say, protective. He had been thinking about Percy Stokes for some time and this morning's service had decided him.

'There are one or two things about Stokes, sir. He's been selling liquor to his servant. Brandy and gin. The servant has been buying it for a crowd of drinkers on the lowerdeck. He's tried to borrow money from Orsini and Kenton, against IOUs. Fortunately neither of them have any left.'

Aitken nodded in agreement. 'I'd heard about Kenton, but not Orsini. The liquor is a bad business: we'll be finding seamen drunk on duty in a day or so. Even the best men don't seem able to control themselves while there's another tot left in a bottle.'

Ramage listened to the two men and considered what they had reported. He guessed that both men had deliberated for several hours before saying anything and, but for the ludicrous service half an hour ago, might well have tried to deal with the chaplain in their own manner. 'Pass the word for the wretched fellow - and stay here: I'll need witnesses for what I may have to do.'

Stokes arrived still wearing his surplice but almost glassy-eyed: he had obviously been drinking again, but he was nervous, his tongue wetting his protruding teeth like a scullery maid washing a draining board.

Ramage remained sitting beside his desk, the chair sideways so that his right arm rested on the polished top. He inspected Stokes once again, the eyes, the face, the grubby surplice - and the hands, clasped in front of him like an unctuous prelate or a nervous beggar. He thought for a moment of the Chaplain General interviewing Stokes. It must have been a rare event; clerics had never pounded on his door. The Horse Guards was a more popular port of call; for a cleric the mess of a fashionable regiment seemed to Ramage infinitely preferable to the gunroom or wardroom of a ship of war. The only advantage of serving in one of the King's ships was that it took a man out of the country. Ramage suddenly stared at Stokes. If he was wrong, the Chaplain General's protest to the First Lord would be vociferous, querulous and acidulous. The First Lord would be his usual cryptic self: he would simply order a court martial to be held on Captain the Lord Ramage.

'Ah, Mr Stokes, when you were last here, you said you had never before been in one of the King's ships.'

'That is correct, sir.'

'But the sea is not unfamiliar to you?'

'Oh yes, indeed, sir; I'm a complete stranger to the sea.'

'To the North Sea?' Ramage asked casually. 'To the Irish Sea? To the Marshalsea?'

The knuckles of Stokes's clasped hands turned white; the man shut his eyes and began to sway, but he was forgetting the height of the beams, and when he raised his head he immediately cracked his brow. His body jerked as though someone had hit him with a cudgel and slowly, like a sack of grain emptying, he subsided to the deck in a faint.

None of the three men moved, but Southwick gave one of his disapproving sniffs. 'The Marshalsea - aye, he looks the sort of fellow that's cruised in that jail more than once!'

'Did he escape or was he released?' Aitken mused. 'Or has he been there before and knew his creditors were about to send him back?'

'He's bolting from his creditors,' Ramage said. 'He's been there before and wasn't risking another visit. Probably so much in debt he knew that once inside he'd never get out again.'

The Marshalsea Prison was unlike the Bridewell. Thieves, rogues, murderers and vagabonds sentenced by the courts were sent to the Bridewell. But the Marshalsea was reserved for debtors. A creditor could apply for a court order which, if granted, locked a debtor in the Marshalsea and kept him there until the debt was paid.

'It's the drink,' Aitken said, his voice sombre. 'I'm sure his thirst overtook his pocket. But how did he persuade the Admiralty? Is his warrant forged?'

'No, I'm sure it's genuine enough, though I haven't inspected it,' Ramage said. 'I'm equally sure he's not a clerk in holy orders - he seemed to be conducting the service as if by rote, and we know about his sermons - ah, he's recovering: now he can tell us himself!'

Slowly Stokes sat up, a puzzled expression on his face. His head was obviously spinning from the fall; Ramage had the impression it was spinning the other way from the drink.

'I must have fainted,' he mumbled. 'It's the rolling.'

'I should stay there,' Ramage said. 'Not so far to fall. Now, you were going to tell us about your cruise in the Marshalsea.'

'I don't know what you mean, sir. This is an insult to a man of the cloth - I shall protest to the Chaplain General!'

'We shall not be seeing England again for half a year or more, so your complaint will have to wait. In the meantime, tell me how you obtained a warrant.'

Stokes swallowed and his tongue slid from side to side over the front of his teeth, but his lips were too dry and they stuck on them, giving him a curious, rabbit-like appearance which contrasted with the ferret-like shape of the face.

Ramage said softly: 'Stokes, at the moment you are trying to decide whether to attempt to brazen it out, or admit to what amounts to fraud. There are no courts and judges where we are going. I am the judge and jury. I can tell you now that I do not think you are a clerk in holy orders, despite your warrant, and I shall not let you minister to the ship's company.'

'You could get yourself into a lot of trouble, Mr high and mighty Lord Ramage,' Stokes said viciously.

'Oh yes,' Ramage said, hoping to draw out the man even more, 'I could face a court martial; I could be dismissed the service.'

'That's right; the famous Lord Ramage court-martialled for ill-treating his chaplain. What a scandal that would cause. Be the death of your father, the shame of it.'

'How much did you owe?' Southwick suddenly asked.

'Owe who?' Stokes said sharply.

Ramage said: 'Stokes, you are not a clerk in holy orders; you do not even have the education necessary for a sexton, so let us agree on that. I am not really interested in your debts or why you bolted. I'm concerned only with that warrant. You are not entitled to it, but somehow you got it.'

'Ah, frightens you, doesn't it? You daren't touch me while I have the warrant. That proves the Admiralty believe me.'

'It's issued by the Navy Office, not the Admiralty, and it certainly does not prove the Navy Board believe you. Describe the Chaplain General,' Ramage said suddenly.

The question took Stokes completely unawares. 'Well, he's - he's rather like me. No, perhaps taller. A very nice man; sympathetic, and concerned that the Navy has only the best men as chaplains ...'

'What does he look like?' Ramage persisted. 'Bald, white hair, grey, black, fifty years old or eighty? Does he walk with a limp? Deep voice or shrill?' He had seen him once at Lord Spencer's, and like many such clerics who owed their position to patronage, the Chaplain General was portly and pink, but his nose was an object few would forget: it was purple, bulbous and almost incredibly long, like an elephant's trunk. Also the voice emerging from the bulky cleric was little more than a squeak; not a voice to fill a modest drawing room, let alone a vast cathedral.

Stokes shrugged his shoulders. As the fainting fit receded in his memory and the word 'warrant' obviously took on the role of a talisman, his cunning was returning and with it a shoddy bravado. 'Can't remember; I only saw him for a moment or two.'

'If you saw the Chaplain General only once and at a distance there are things about him you would remember.'

'Well, I don't, and that's that.'

'Get up,' Ramage said, the quietness of his voice making both Southwick and Aitken prepare to move swiftly. Stokes, too, realized that there was a change of mood in the cabin. 'Take off that surplice.'

'Whoa, my Lord!' Stokes protested, 'you can't give orders like that to a man of the cloth!'

'I know, but you are a vagabond, not a man of the cloth, and I'm not having vagabonds walking about this ship disguised as men of God. Take it off or the Marine sentry will strip you bare.'

Stokes suddenly realized that the quiet voice was a danger signal. Swaying and frightened, he pulled off the surplice and cassock and stood in his underwear, holding them out to Ramage like a peace offering.

'What happened?' Ramage asked.

'When, sir?' Stokes was admitting defeat, but now fright was changing to panic.

'How did you get that warrant?'

'It's all legal, sir,' the man whined. 'I wrote to the Chaplain General applying for a position in one of the King's ships, and saying I looked forward to visiting foreign countries. I enclosed a recommendation from the Bishop of London and the Dean of Westminster.'

'How did you get them?'

'Oh, that was easy. I knew their names and styles, you see.'

'How did that get you recommendations?' Ramage asked, puzzled by Stokes's patient explanation of what seemed so obvious to him.

'Well, it means I got all the details right in the letters of recommendation. I write a fair hand and a change of pen is a change of style.'

'Oh, you forged them!'

'Of course, sir,' Stokes said contemptuously. 'I got my new name out of a University register, so if anyone looked up Percival Stokes they'd see he had a good degree and was a clerk in holy orders. The Chaplain General was ill and his secretary accepted my letters, and the next thing was an Admiralty messenger delivered my warrant and orders to report to "His Majesty's ship Calypso, frigate". And I did.'

'So you are not "Percival Stokes"?'

'Not likely!' the man said scornfully. 'Percival - what a name. No, the Reverend Percival Stokes lives in Bristol, according to the University register.'

'What's your name, then? Your real name?'

'Robert Smith.'

'Very well, Robert Smith. What debts are you bolting from?'

'Well, there are several,' he admitted.

'Were all your creditors taking you to court?'

'Well, no, only one, but the others would have the minute they heard about it.'

'How large is that one debt?'

'Sixteen pounds.'

Southwick sniffed and Aitken grinned: they could see the way their captain's mind was working.

'Listen carefully, Smith. I can stop a ship returning to England and have you landed under an arrest, charged with impersonation, defrauding the Admiralty, and various other things that will put you in the Bridewell - the Bridewell, not the Marshalsea - for several years, and when you're released your creditors will still be there waiting to pop you in the Marshalsea. Or . . .'

Smith was now pale and shaking; the perspiration was pouring down his face and he was too panic-stricken to lift a hand to wipe it away. He was watching Ramage, waiting for the next words.

'Or what, sir?' he exclaimed.

'Well, the Navy won't surrender a seaman for a civil debt of £20 or less. Although we're now at peace, the wartime laws concerning our seamen still apply. If you want to volunteer for the Navy, you're free to do so. Sleep on it and tell Mr Southwick tomorrow morning. In the meantime Mr Aitken will tell the purser to issue you with a hammock. Now, clear your gear out of the cabin you've been using and get forward!'

Smith almost ran through the door, remembering to keep his head down.

Aitken said: 'Not one of the King's best bargains, sir!'

'No, but it's got him out of the gunroom.'

'Aye, and for that many thanks, sir.'

'And as soon as we meet another of the King's ships, we can transfer him.'

Southwick said, 'I have to admit I admire the rogue, sir. Fancy forging references from the Bishop of London and the Dean of Westminster! He was lucky the Chaplain General was ill: if there'd been an interview ... he doesn't look much like a chaplain.'

'I've seen worse,' Ramage said, 'even if they smell fresher, but I admire him, too.'