Ramage and the Renegades

'You are the foreman carpenter?' Ramage asked politely.

'Yes, sir.' Now he had an ingratiating smile. Already he had noted Southwick's presence and (Ramage sensed) had probably guessed that the message about the five guineas had been passed.

'Your name?'

'Porter, sir. Albert Porter.'

'You live nearby; I can tell from your accent.' Ramage's voice was friendly, and from the way the man's eyes were sweeping the desk he was looking to see where the pile of coins was waiting.

'Ah yes, sir. Born in the Hundred of Hoo, I was, and served my apprenticeship at a shipyard that side of the river before starting in the dockyard. Twelve years ago, that was.'

'Three or four years before the war began,' Ramage commented.

'S'right, sir. Kept us busy, the war. Still, now peace is here and I got my little house and four children. Big expense, a wife, a house and children.'

'So I believe,' Ramage said dryly. 'I've been at sea all the time, so they are three problems I don't have.'

'Ah, you're a lucky man, sir, a lucky man.'

'However, I've been wounded four times, and with Mr Southwick here I've lost a couple of ships. I've read the funeral service over more of my men than I care to remember . . .' Ramage let his voice die away, as though stifled by memories. He had the memories, but far from stifling him they were making him hot with anger, although this lout was too greedy to realize it.

'You must have saved hard to pay for a house - or do you rent it?'

'No, sir, all paid for it is; I don't owe any man a penny piece.'

Ramage nodded understandingly. 'Your children marry, you spoil your grandchildren, and enjoy a happy old age, eh?'

'S'right, sir,' the man grinned. Here was an understanding captain who was in a hurry to sail. Five guineas had been pitching it much too low. Some said he was a lord, and ten guineas should have been the price. Perhaps he'd get the chance of saying that the master, Southwick or some such name, had misheard him.

'I wonder how many of the Calypso's officers and men will live to become grandfathers...'

The foreman looked puzzled. The captain seemed to be talking to himself, and he was still almost mumbling.' ... All the officers of the Sibella were killed except me ... A lot of men killed when we lost the Kathleen cutter... Several died in the Triton brig... We lost Baker in Curaçao, when I had a bullet in the arm and this bang on the head . . .' He tapped a small patch of white hair. 'No, they won't ever be grandfathers.'

Albert Porter, his head and shoulders bent below the beams, suddenly found he was staring into a pair of deep-set brown eyes that seemed to be looking right through him and seeing, across the river, his house built with the bribes he had managed to extract from impatient captains - men impatient to get to sea, the poor fools, where they stood a good chance of having their heads knocked off by roundshot. Albert Porter just had time to realize he had made a mistake when a cold but quiet voice seemed to wrap itself round him and penetrate his clothes like a chill Medway fog.

'Porter, while you have been doing your job here in the dockyard, the officers and men in the King's ships have been at sea, fighting the weather and the French and the Dutch and the Spanish and the Danes. They've been collecting musket balls and roundshot and yellow fever and scurvy; you've been collecting tainted guineas to buy yourself a house, a wife and four children. Do you understand the two different kinds of life?'

The eyes and the tone made Porter agree at once.

'Good, Porter, so we understand each other. Now, I am going to tell you a story. The companionway down to the gunroom comprises ten steps. A man tripped at the top and fell down them once. He was picked up dead. The parish - he was a dockyard man - had to bury him. It's surprising how these sort of accidents happen. A chisel slips and cuts a vein and in a trice a man bleeds to death; someone else slips on one of the sidebattens and falls into the boat and breaks his neck across a thwart. A third has his skull split as he walks along the deck and a double block falls on him from an upperyard. Indeed, Porter, as the chaplains tell us, "In the midst of life, we are in death.'"

'Yes, sir,' Porter managed to whisper.

'I called you here to give you some information, Porter. We have seven extra people joining the ship on Thursday; we sail on Friday. We need seven extra cabins ready by Thursday.'

'Yes, sir.'

'You are a conscientious man, I know. Do I have your assurance that the seven cabins will be ready in time, doors hung and glazed with stone-ground glass, and everything painted?'

'Yes, sir,' Porter said, at last coming to life. 'Oh, easily by Thursday, sir.'

'Very well, thank you. You may go.'

After the man shambled out, Southwick said: 'You'd never have done it. Rossi, Stafford, Jackson - yes, any of them would have given him a push at a word from you. But I can't see you giving the word.'

Ramage grinned, his eyes now warm, the hard line gone from his lips. He looked at the man who was old enough to be his father and who had served as master in every ship Ramage had commanded, from the earliest day when as a lieutenant he had commanded the little Kathleen cutter.

'It doesn't matter what you think, does it? Porter is convinced I can, so the cabins will be ready and we'll be off Black Stakes on Friday, taking on powder.'

All ships, naval and mercantile, coming to London or the Medway had to unload their gunpowder into barges moored at Black Stakes, at the entrance to the Thames. The risk of fire and a ship exploding in the London docks or close to one of the Medway towns was too great to allow any exceptions. It delayed a ship, but many an officer late back from leave was glad to hire a cutter at London Bridge and be put on board at Black Stakes.

'Is it true we're getting a chaplain, sir?'

Ramage had mentioned it to the first lieutenant because Aitken, a Highlander, would not welcome what undoubtedly would be to him a High Church minister. The Low Church first lieutenant and the free-thinking master must have been discussing it.

'Yes. Someone has applied.' It was a convenient way of telling the officers (which meant the ship's company would know soon enough) that he had not asked for a chaplain; everyone knew the regulations.

'I've never met one yet that was worth the room to sling a hammock.'

'Perhaps not. but let's hope he plays chess.'

Southwick chuckled and reached for his hat. A long time ago, he and Mr Ramage had joined the Triton brig at Portsmouth to find that the ship's surgeon was a drunkard; avery skilful doctor who had practised in Wimpole Street until his heavy drinking drove his patients away, and the Navy had offered him the only way of earning a living from medicine. Mr Ramage had other ideas: no drunkard would be allowed to treat his men, but he had neither the time nor the influence to have the man changed. Being Mr Ramage, Southwick reflected, he found no difficulty in solving the problem: the drunkard must be cured. It had been a terrible time for Bowen. the surgeon, for Southwick, and for Mr Ramage, but they had cured Bowen. And once the drink no longer clouded his brain, left his eyes bloodshot slits and his face a sweat-stained mat of unshaven whiskers, they found the surgeon was a highly intelligent and amusing man. But part of the convalescence had involved preventing Bowen returning to the drink, and once Ramage found that he was a skilful chess player, Southwick had been made to play seemingly endless games of chess.

Actually Southwick himself, now considerably more skilful, enjoyed an occasional couple of games with Bowen, but four or five games a week were enough for him, whereas Bowen was good for four or five games a day. A parson had to be able to play, he told himself as he left the cabin. If he could not, then he could dam' well learn.

Although the seven newcomers had come by different coaches, starting off from London Bridge or the Bricklayers Arms, all had of course followed the Dover Road, stopping for fresh horses at Blackheath, the Golden Lion on Bexley Heath, again at Dartford, at the Chalk Street Turnpike beyond Gravesend, and finally at Rochester before getting out at the Star Inn to spend the night ready to join the Calypso early on Thursday.