"Providing you make that first jump on to the Post List," Ramage pointed out. "Unless he is a post-captain, he doesn't even put a foot on the bottom rung ..."
"That's understood, sir. Don't forget he's already refused one chance. Admittedly that was because he reckoned he wasn't ready, and would learn a lot more by staying with you."
"Yes, but now he's learned all he can from me. He's ready for the Post List, and I don't want anything like this -" he gestured in the direction of the Jason, "- getting in the way. Now, leave me to write up my journal. Between now and the time we reach the Chops of the Channel, I have to write a full report on all this business ..."
"Aye, and if you'll allow me to stick an oar in, sir, you'd be well advised to get signed reports from the Calypso's officers, and perhaps some of the senior petty officers."
"You are gloomy," Ramage commented.
"I just wonder who this Captain Shirley has for friends. As I see it, his friends are going to be our enemies, if all this business comes to trial."
Southwick was right, of course: whatever happened, it was all bound to come to a trial which would clear or condemn Shirley. It could even turn into a situation where clearing Shirley meant condemning Ramage . . . All the Calypsos were certain that Shirley was mad. Perhaps not permanently, but at least temporarily. Touched by the sun, perhaps. Anyway, Bowen was going to examine him tomorrow and would write a report, but all that would not stop Shirley getting a fair trial.
It was more likely, Ramage thought ironically, to bring odium and attacks down on the head of Captain Ramage, if Shirley had friends in high places and money to pay off the press and get lampoons and pamphlets sold in the streets. Ramage knew how vicious were the attacks made on his own father, when the Earl of Blazey was made the government's scapegoat for sending a fleet too weak and too late to deal with a French attack on the West Indies. And most shameful of all (perhaps the most shameful episode in recent British political history) there was the Byng affair: there a not-very-bright but honourable admiral had been accused of cowardice and shot to disguise the vacillating weakness and stupidity of the First Lord, Anson, and the prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle.
Stupidity? No, it was the very essence of politics: viciousness, self-interest, hunger for power and cowardice. In.the case of Admiral Byng the whole crowd of them, the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Hardwicke (and his son-in-law Anson) and most of the rest of the party were trying to cling to power in Parliament, and they were quite prepared to murder Byng (judicially, of course: why use a stiletto when you have the law to do it?). Byng was executed and they kept power. Byng, Ramage reflected, lost his life, but the government under Newcastle and the Admiralty under Anson lost their honour (without realizing what it was).
Ramage knew he should talk again to Shirley and his officers before drafting his report. Yet after talking to any of them he came away with the feeling that he had been dreaming; their answers were so incoherent or remote from reality that recalling them later was like trying to remember how you had behaved while drunk at a party.
Captain Shirley had never seen such grim-faced men sitting round his dining table, and he seemed more puzzled than alarmed. Both Wagstaffe and Aitken held pens and had to share the same inkwell as they wrote down the questions, and Shirley's answers, making him slow down or repeat an answer. The demands for repetition were frequent because many of Shirley's answers were difficult to credit.
The Jason was rolling her way along, astern of the convoy, in good weather. Wagstaffe had the big awning stretched over the quarterdeck and the captain's coach, cabin and sleeping place were cool. Ramage had thought deeply about making Shirley move down into one of the officer's cabins in the gunroom but had finally decided to leave him in his quarters and instead put Wagstaffe in the first lieutenant's cabin, making all the lieutenants shift round one.
As soon as Ramage had come on board and Wagstaffe had the frigate under way again (at the speed the convoy was making good, nothing was lost by heaving-to the frigate to avoid getting soaked by spray which would be thrown up if the ship had to tow the Calypso's boat alongside), Shirley - still in his long black coat - had walked over and greeted Ramage.
"Ah, my dear Ramage, how thoughtful of you to pay us a call," he had said in a completely sincere voice, rubbing his hands as though washing them. "Can I persuade you to dine with me this time? No - then a cup of green tea, or a glass of something stronger?"
The man had been genuinely upset when Ramage refused, and again Ramage was reminded of an anxious parson who felt he was being rebuffed by his patron.
Even now, sitting round the dining table, Ramage at the head, Shirley to his left and with Aitken and Wagstaffe on his right, facing Shirley, the man exuded sincerity. Sincerity? Well, again and again Ramage was reminded of the last occasion he had met the Archbishop of Canterbury, who proved to be a most unctuous individual exuding the secretive bonhomie expected of the doorman at one of the better houses of pleasure in Westminster.
Ramage tapped the table to emphasize what he was going to say.
"Captain Shirley, for the eleventh time I must ask you why you raked the Calypso although she was displaying British colours and her pendant numbers, and was flying the correct challenge?"
"My dear Ramage, why should the Jason fire at the Calypso?"
"Don't dodge the question," Ramage snapped. "I am asking you."
"On what authority, pray?"
Ramage waited until Aitken and Wagstaffe had finished writing. It gave him time to think, although God knew he had already given the subject enough thought.
"On the authority of a captain of one of the King's ships trying to discover the reason for a traitorous and treasonable attack by another of the King's ships."
"But no one attacked you, treasonably or traitorously. Ask my officers. Ask my men. You have done so once already, but you have my permission to ask them again."
This man was so calm and cool. Both Wagstaffe and Aitken were perspiring - although that could be from the effort of writing fast and concentrating. But this man Shirley - there was not even a single bead of perspiration on his brow. A belly of pork! Ramage suddenly realized that the man's complexion, dead white and only wrinkled by lines running from each side of his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, reminded him of a familiar sight in a pork butcher's shop. The man's baldness heightened the effect: not only was the skull utterly hairless, but Ramage was sure (probably because of some illness, malaria, perhaps) no hair grew on the man at all. Did he have to shave? There was none of the shadow on his face that most men had by late afternoon (and even earlier in the Tropics, where the heat made hair grow faster).
His eyes were small but unusually widely spaced. However, the nose seemed to belong to another face altogether. This face was cadaverous, the skin tight over the bones, with no pouches beneath the eyes, no hint of middle age in jowls. No, there was not much flesh to wrinkle, apart from the lines beside the nose. But the nose!
It seemed to belong to a much bigger and heavier man; someone with Falstaffian girth and a plump face, and a great club of a nose that commanded attention like a blunderbuss when its owner aimed it. In keeping with the rest of the face it was bloodless, yet for its size one would have expected a healthy pink glow, something that would show up on a dark night.
Both Aitken and Wagstaffe had written down the answer. Ramage looked at Shirley again.
"Have you threatened any of your ship's company so that they are frightened of answering my questions?"
"Why should I? I have nothing to hide! Ask them anything you like, my dear fellow."