"What were your orders if and when you were boarded by us?"
"Orders, sir? Oh Gawd, sir, it ain't like that at alclass="underline" please go an' ask the officers 'cos they know all abart it."
"So none of you are going to fight us?"
"Fight you?" the man said in alarm. "Strike me, we bin 'oping fer weeks something like this would 'appen."
Aitken turned and reported to Ramage, who thought for a moment and then snapped out orders. "Rennick," 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.