‘’Twas all right in the Rover, sir,' he said softly, his eyes dropped and yet apparently focused on a distant object, 'an' I reckoned you had told her captain all about it.'
'No,' Ramage interrupted, 'he was told you'd been flogged for drunkenness.'
'Oh,' Dyson said, obviously absorbing the information. ‘Well, in Portsmouth I was sent to a ship of the line. The fellows saw the scars on m' back from the cat-o'-nine-tails, and one of the bosun's mates got it in fer me. Seemed to guess what really happened, but I don't know 'ow 'e could. Well, I couldn't move without gettin' a floggin'. Case o' give a dog a bad name, I reckon. That cat would 'ave killed me if I ‘adn't run, sir, and that's the bleedin' truth.'
And Ramage believed him: he had heard at least one captain declare that flogging ruined a good man and made a bad man like Dyson much worse. But at the time there had been no choice: Dyson had quite deliberately planned a mutiny, and a couple of dozen lashes was an almost derisory punishment: a court martial would have hanged him or given him five hundred lashes - which would probably have killed him before they were all administered. Dyson's life had in fact been saved because Ramage's orders were to carry urgent dispatches to the fleet off Brest and to the West Indies: there was no time to land him, let alone wait for several days for a court-martial.
Dyson was a bad man; even in time of peace he would always have been on the run from the law, a clumsy pickpocket, a noisy cutpurse, a highwayman whose horse always went lame or whose pistols misfired . . . War had only hastened the process of dissolution.
Meanwhile they had to work with Dyson - and Dyson had to work with the three seamen who had forced a confession out of him, and the officer who had ordered his flogging. He was ideally placed, Ramage thought uncomfortably, to get his revenge by betraying them all in France.
'Who chose you to help us?' Ramage asked curiously.
Dyson glanced round to make sure no one else was within earshot. 'The leader of the Folkestone and Dover smacks - the contraband smacks, you understand? - had a chat with three or four of us skippers. Didn't say your name, o' course, 'cos he didn't know it, but when he said the password - mentioning the Triton - I straight away thought of you, sir. An' - well, I volunteered because I - well, you treated me all right, sir, an' I thought if I could 'elp you ... I guessed it was summat unusual, so . . .'
Surprisingly, Ramage believed him: the story was so improbable that it had to be true. 'I understand, Dyson. We'll forget the past now because we've got a busy future ahead of us.'
He called for more beer, and was thankful that Dyson's story ruled out Simpson having had a direct hand in the seaman's choice. The man living in the shadow of Studfall Castle would have been capable of arranging it as a veiled threat: reminding Ramage that he was at the mercy of a former mutineer. .
'Well, when do we sail, Dyson?'
'You'd better call me Slushy, sir, while we're in 'ere, just in case one of the local lads 'ears us. Sounds less formal, like,’ he explained apologetically.
Ramage nodded. 'Very well. How about your crew?'
Dyson looked up quickly. ‘I 'aven't signed on a crew apart from two of me regulars' - he managed to avoid saying 'sir’ – ‘’cos they said you 'ad three men. I -' he looked nervously at the three seamen, as though uncertain how they would react to what he was about to say, 'I sort of 'oped it'd be these three, and the five of us is enough for the smack, wot wiv the other two . . .' He stopped, confused and glanced round the bar, noting the group of seamen drinking at the far end. 'Mebbe we'd better get on board the smack where we can talk wivart whisperin'.'
It was difficult to distinguish the shape of the smack in the darkness, except that Ramage saw she had a squarish transom which made her look more French than English. But as hw hauled himself on board from the heavy rowing boat he could see she was strongly rigged: the lanyards were freshly tarred, and the shrouds were hemp. Expensive stuff for a smack; at least if she had been a smack whose catch came in nets, not casks.
The name carved into the wood across the transom was Marie, with 'Dover' in smaller letters on a board beneath: small enough to be almost indistinguishable.
Dyson muttered sheepishly, 'Welcome on board, sir,' and led the way to the little cuddy, climbing down the hatch and hanging the lantern he had been carrying on a hook screwed into the beam over a small table.
Crouching because there was little more than sitting head-room, Dyson squeezed to one side of the companion ladder so that Ramage, Stafford, Rossi and Jackson could pass him and sit on the U-shaped seat built round the two sides and the forward end of the table. As soon as they were seated, Dyson leaned back, sitting partly on one of the companion ladder steps, his head at the same level as the others.
The wind was from the south-west, pushing just enough swell into the inner harbour to make the Marie roll at her mooring. The lantern swung on the hook, sending shadows dancing round the cuddy, but its long handle and the low head-room meant the flame dazzled Ramage, sitting at the forward side of the table, and prevented him from seeing Dyson's face. The suspicion that the seaman had deliberately placed him at a disadvantage vanished when Dyson reached over with an oath and put the lantern on another hook on a beam farther aft. 'Let's all shift round a bit so's I can sit here at the table; that bleedin' lantern's blindin' me.'
There was just enough room for him to squeeze on to the seat next to Jackson, with Rossi and Stafford facing him and Ramage to his right, as though at the head of the table. Dyson sat for a minute or two alone with his thoughts while the other four men wriggled themselves into comfortable positions.
Two years - it wasn't a long time, really, but a lot had happened in Dyson's life. Two years ago he had existed only as an entry in the Muster Book of His Majesty's brig Triton. All that the Navy wanted to know about him had been written in one cryptic line under several headings: Albert Dyson; born Lydd, Kent; age on entry 28; rating, cook's mate; pressed; served in the brig fourteen months before being discharged to the Rover.
Various other reports and returns now gathering dust on the shelves of the Admiralty and the various boards which administered to the Navy's needs recorded the rest of the brief and mundane history of Albert Dyson's efforts towards defeating France. The slop book recorded the clothes and other items issued to him when he first joined a ship ('1 shirt, 1 frock, 1 trowsers, 1 shoes, 1 bed, 3lb tobacco,' and the prices he was charged - 15s 8d for the clothing, 10s for the bed, which was of course a hammock and blanket, and 4s 9d for tobacco). He appeared once in the Triton's log and in her Captain's journaclass="underline" in the 'Remarks' column, next to the time, distance sailed, speed and wind direction, was noted the fact that Albert Dyson had been given two dozen lashes for drunkenness. But Albert Dyson's name appeared most frequently in the Surgeon's daily journal, not because he was ever really sick but because he was imaginative enough to invent aches and pains which at first had led the surgeon to allow him a day in his hammock from time to time. This had continued until Ramage's predecessor as captain of the Triton became exasperated and suggested to the surgeon that a few tots of castor oil might well bring about a miraculous and permanent cure of all the cook's mate's varied ailments. The Surgeon's journal eventually recorded - if only by the subsequent absence of Dyson's name - the captain's diagnostic skill.
As he sat in the Marie's cuddy, Dyson for once found himself tense but not nervous. Normally the two went together because tension was caused by the fact he was usually engaged in some illegal act, and the nervousness came naturally since he knew the penalty. Experience had taught all the Dyson family that only quick wits, a smooth tongue and very careful planning could keep their bodies clear of gibbets and outside prison walls.