So, he told himself mockingly, it all depends—he pushed up the tip of his nose to shave the upper lip—on this face and this tongue. He stuck it out for a moment like a rude urchin, then cursed as he tasted soap in his mouth.
Ten minutes later, shaved, dressed and with the rest of the tea warm inside him, he pulled on his boots, making sure the strap over the throwing knife was clear. Then he took a mahogany box containing a pair of pistols, powder, shot and wads from his trunk and put it on the table. Leave the lid open or closed? Closed—it musn't be too obvious.
He looked at his watch: fifteen minutes to four o'clock. Fifteen minutes to waste. Well, he might as well start writing his new log and journal, which should have been done yesterday. He took a large, thin book from the bottom drawer, unscrewed the cap of the inkwell, and wrote boldly across the front cover in letters a couple of inches high, 'H.M.S. Triton' and in smaller letters underneath, 'Captain's Log 18 April 1797 - I7 June 1797'.
Under the Admiralty's 'Regulations and Instructions' the log had to be sent to the Admiralty after two months and a new one started. If he kept his command that long.
Opening the book and glancing idly at the first page, which was divided vertically under several headings, he began by filling in the blank spaces in the lines of print across the top of the page:
'Log of the Proceedings of His Majesty's Ship Triton, Nicholas Ramage, Lieutenant and Commander, between the 18th Day of April and the I9th Day of April.'
Since the nautical day was measured from noon one day to noon the next, the Navy afloat was always half a day ahead of the folk on land, and as far as the log was concerned, it was still the same day that he had joined the Triton and would be for another eight hours. He inserted the date and wind direction in the appropriate columns and, under 'Remarks' wrote: 'Joined ship as per Commission. Read Commission on quarterdeck. Ship's company apparently in state of mutiny.'
He shut the log impatiently, reflecting this would be a daily task for many months ahead, and took out a similar volume, writing on the front 'Captain's Journal, H.M. brig Triton' and the same two-month period. On the first page he filled in the blank columns under the 'Date', and 'Wind', and drew a line under such headings as 'Course', 'Miles', 'Latitude' and 'Longitude'.
In the end column, headed 'Remarkable Observations and Accidents', he wrote:
On first boarding ship, read commission. Master reported to Captain that ship's company in state of nonviolent mutiny. Captain's only order, to hoist his trunk on board, obeyed by three men transferred to brig the previous day from the Lively frigate. During evening Captain gave certain instructions to Master concerning getting the ship under way next morning. No Marines on duty but their basic loyalty reported to be not in doubt. Appears they (six in number and corporal) and the twenty-five men transferred from the Lively frigate fear reprisals from the original ship's company.
As he wiped the pen and closed the inkwell, Ramage glanced at what he'd written. If anything went wrong and his plan failed, the paragraphs he'd written in the log and in the journal would be chewed over by a court martial as carefully as a hungry dog chewed over a fresh bone.
Every word, every comma, would be questioned; every possible construction put on every phrase. It'd be no excuse to say they'd been written before dawn, before he was fully awake. And his plan—well, even though it seemed the only one that had a chance of success, it'd be treated as madness, because six captains sitting in judgement on him would never understand it.
Whereas they would expect him to wave the Articles of War and breathe fire and brimstone, he was going to gamble on men—on the intelligence of one in particular, Harris, the Triton's spokesman whom he did not know, and on the sentiment of the former Kathleens, all of whom he did.
His bet was that he could guess the reaction of all of them, Tritons and Kathleens alike, when their captain sprang a surprise on them; did something they could never have expected and wouldn't know how to deal with...
He slipped his sword belt over his right shoulder and looked at his watch. Three minutes to four. He took the lantern from its hook and went up on deck.
The wind was fresh, not yet strong enough to sound shrill in the masts, yards and rigging—which he could just make out as black webs against the dark night sky—but sufficient to moan like a man in pain, unreal and almost ghostly in the night and already starting to sap at the confidence Ramage was just beginning to feel.
It should be light enough to aim a pistol in ten minutes or so since there was a hint of cold greyness about him. Soon Southwick came over with a lantern and reported:
'I'm just going below now, sir.'
'Very well; start from aft so you can see what's happening as you walk back again.'
As the master disappeared down the companionway it was almost uncanny on board the brig: it needed only an owl making its weird call to complete the illusion he was standing in a graveyard: not a man on deck apart from himself. It was the first night he'd ever spent in a ship at anchor without men keeping an anchor watch, a Marine sentry at the gangway with loaded musket, and an officer, midshipman or warrant officer pacing the deck.
However, since the Triton had been anchored for nearly a week without even a cook's mate keeping the deck by day or night, he'd decided it was pointless for Southwick and himself each to lose half a night's sleep when both would need all their wits about them by dawn. Their Lordships would not approve; but since they had to administer the Navy, they could never admit a man ever needed sleep or had to use unusual methods in carrying out their orders.
Suddenly from below came Southwick's stentorian voice bellowing: 'Wakey, wakey there! Come on—lash up and stow; show a leg, show a leg, look alive there! Lash up and stow, the sun's burning your eyeballs out!'
Every few moments, sounding fainter as he walked forward, the Master repeated the time-honoured and time-worn orders and imprecations—normally bawled by the bosun's mates and puntuated by the shrill notes of their bosun's calls —to rouse out the men and have them roll their hammocks and bedding into long sausage shapes and lash them up with the regulation number of turns.
Then the men would troop up on deck to stow the hammocks in the racks of netting along the top of the bulwarks. There—covered with long strips of canvas to keep them dry —they also formed a barricade against musket-fire when the ship went into action, 'Lash up and stow, lash up and stow...'
The voice was very faint: Southwick must be right up forward now, turning to retrace his steps and see how many of the sixty-one men were obeying. This was the first of several crucial moments he and Ramage had to face in the next twenty minutes.
Then the Master was back on deck, swinging the lantern. He said quietly: 'All the Kathleens and the Marines are lashing their hammocks. The rest haven't moved. Harris's hammock is the nearest as you go forward.'
'Better than I expected. We'll wait a couple of minutes.'
The first half dozen of the seamen came up the ladder, running to the bulwarks amidships and placing their hammocks in the netting. Normally it was done by orders; but there were no petty officers to give them. Although more men came up from below Ramage did not bother to count— Southwick would be doing that.
The Master murmured: 'Twenty-nine still below, sir.'
There was no chance those men were being slow.
'Give me the lantern.'
'Go carefully, sir. Let me come with you.'
'No, stay here, and get those men working—unrolling the hammock cloths, or anything that keeps them occupied."