'Perhaps if you saw the dockyard Commissioner, sir . . .' Southwick's tone showed he was simply being polite.
'I can tell you exactly what the Commissioner would say,' Ramage said bitterly. He thought for a minute or two, saw and understood the glint in Southwick's eye, and nodded at the master.
'As you know, I have secret orders I can't yet open. The general orders I have, though, mean that we must sail as soon as possible. The ship's company are back from leave, we have the miners and bricklayers, and we are provisioned and watered. If the cabins were completed, we could even sail on Friday; we'd be clear of the Nore by Friday night...'
'But it'd cost us five guineas,' Southwick said.
'You know, Southwick, I don't see why I should pay an Englishman five guineas to be allowed to go about the King's business ... These fellows have grown rich by blackmailing captains anxious to get to sea again to fight the King's enemies. Now the King has no enemies, except these wretched crooks. Perhaps we should have a look at this particular scoundrel. Tell the sentry to send for him.'
Southwick went to the door and passed the order, but he looked worried when he sat down again. 'Corrupt they may be, sir, but if we make an enemy of Commissioner Wedge we'll never get anything done. It's not this refit nor even the next one I'm thinking about; it's the one after that. A commissioner can keep a ship and her captain locked up in a drydock for months - he has only to keep finding defects which, he says, he's anxious to make good for the ship's safety.'
'I know that,' Ramage said shortly. 'We are concerned now with a carpenter, not a commissioner. If you feel squeamish, you'd better take a walk in the fresh air.'
'Squeamish?' Southwick grinned. 'No, I think I shall enjoy this.'
A knock on the door and the sentry's hail announced the foreman's arrival. When he came in Ramage saw he was a big hulking man who had to crouch to walk into the cabin, with its headroom of five feet four inches.
The man was at least six feet tall and almost handsome, the narrow face and greasy black hair seeming not to belong to the broad shoulders and large hands.
'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.'