Ramage and the Renegades

'Ah,' Aitken said, glancing at Ramage, 'that's an interesting point of view which I know the captain has considered before. At this place in Essex where you had your kirk - did ye not have whores and thieves and vagabonds, like anywhere else?'

Stokes raised his hands, palms outwards, and assumed what he must have considered a man-of-the-world expression. 'Ah, a few of each, I must admit; the flesh is weak and a chaplain can only advise and pray and point theway...'

'I'm thinking ye've abandoned your flock,' Aitken said, his voice sorrowful, 'because while ye could perhaps have converted the whores and thieves and vagabonds in Essex, we dinna have one of any of those on board this ship for ye to practise on, Mr Stokes.'

'Ah, lieutenant, there you are mistaken,' Stokes said patronizingly, assuming that the fact that Aitken deferred to the captain meant that the chaplain's position was between the two. 'No man is without sin, is he, Captain?'

'He is in this ship,' Aitken said crisply, 'otherwise he gets a flogging!'

Ramage was hard put to keep a straight face: Aitken had set the trap, Stokes had walked in and Aitken had sprung it. Stokes was not to know that Ramage had ordered only two men to be flogged since he first commanded a ship, and anyway, he was technically correct.

'Flogging?' Stokes's eyes jerked from Aitken to Ramage, as though - as though what? Ramage was not yet sure. Did the thought of flogging horrify him, as it did Ramage and many other captains? No, it was more fear than horror in the man's eyes.

'Yes, flogging. As you mentioned, no man is without sin; likewise no man is beyond the reach of the cat-o'-nine-tails.'

'Except the officers, of course!' Stokes tried to smile at his own joke, but Ramage decided to stretch the truth to see what effect it had.

'Officers, too,' he said. 'The captain of a ship has more power than the King - you realize that, Mr Stokes?'

'Er, well, I did not realize that. In what way, sir?"

'The King cannot order a man to be flogged; I can.'

'So let us pray,' Stokes said unctuously, 'that everyone behaves himself.'

'They won't,' Aitken commented gloomily, 'they never do. Well now,' he said, looking at his watch, 'your fellow warrant officers will be busy taking all the food, so perhaps...'

The first lieutenant picked up his hat and Ramage was thankful to see that Stokes was obviously going to follow him. However, there was just one thing to make clear right at the beginning of the chaplain's ecclesiastical reign. 'Mr Stokes - neither I nor the ship's company like long sermons. Apart from anything else, the weather is seldom suitable: too cold in northern waters for them to sit around for long, and too hot in the Tropics. So remember, ten minutes!'

'Oh Captain,' Stokes said reproachfully, 'what can I tell the men in ten minutes?'

'I can read the Articles of War in less,' Ramage said. 'They are the rules governing the behaviour of every man in the Navy, from an admiral to a boy, in peace or war, at sea or in harbour.'

'But all my sermons -'

Ramage pictured a packet of a couple of dozen sermons, written by some hack cleric and sold at fourpence each.

'The men don't like shop sermons,' Aitken said. 'Funny how they spot them, isn't it, sir? They can tell at once whether a chaplain is talking from his heart or just reciting.'

'I'm not sure about all the men, but this captain can, and he's certainly not about to sit through a fourpenny tract.'

It was unfair to harp on fourpence, but Ramage was sure that one of the first questions asked by Stokes when he boarded the frigate was aimed at the purser - how many men did the Calypso muster? That number, multiplied by fourpence, told him how much his monthly 'groats' would total.

Aitken opened the door and Stokes scuttled out, obviously distraught at the loss of his sermons for twenty-four Sundays.

The first lieutenant returned two or three minutes later. 'I think you've squared his yards, sir.'

Stokes had been brought to heel, like a wayward gun dog. 'But,' Ramage said sourly, 'that doesn't alter the fact we've got to put up with him lurking round the ship for the next few months.'

'"Lurking" - aye, ye've got him there, sir; the man's a lurker, that's for sure. But he's the worst of the bunch; the rest o' them seem pleasant enough.'

'I'll see them two at a time this afternoon, beginning with the surveyors.'

Aitken brought in two young men whom Ramage assumed were brothers until the first lieutenant mentioned their names. David Williams, the elder, was a Welshman, black-haired and blue-eyed and with what Ramage thought of as a laughing face; Williams obviously saw the humorous side of life, while his fellow surveyor, Walter White, also black-haired and blue-eyed, came from Kettering and obviously took a far more serious view of his work and his immediate future. One could imagine his notebook showing the distance between two distant points as being correct to half an inch, while Williams would prefer rounded figures.

'Can you give us any idea what we'll be surveying, sir?'

'No, I'm afraid not. I'm not being unnecessarily secretive: we are sailing with sealed orders. But I can assure you there'll be plenty of work for both of you once we arrive.'

Williams grinned happily. 'It's our first voyage, sir, so we're excited. We're lucky it's with you, sir!'

Ramage smiled and said: 'You've heard of me?'

'I've got a copy of every Gazette mentioning you, sir.'

White said it in such a lugubrious voice that it took Ramage a few moments to realize that the young man was making a proud boast.

'I didn't realize the Gazette was so popular in Kettering!'

'Ah, no, but we both worked in the Navy Office, sir.'

'The Navy Office?'

'Yes, sir. The Hydrographer came over to Somerset Place one day and talked to the head surveyor, and we were offered this job. Neither of us is married, sir.'

'Well, I wish I could tell you more about the work. It'll be typical of the naval service, though; weeks of tedium getting there, then a frantic rush where eighteen hours' work a day won't be enough, and then weeks more tedium.'

He nodded to Aitken, and the surveyors were replaced with the draughtsmen. They had been recruited in the same way and were equally anxious to know their destination. Their task, they explained, was to take all the measurements supplied by the surveyors, mostly angles and distances, and turn them into maps for people to look at.

The last pair, the botanist and the artist, seemed at first to be an ill-assorted couple. The botanist, Edward Garret, a grey-haired man with the weathered face of a fisherman or farmer, promptly denied that he was a botanist. 'I'm a farmer who likes to experiment,' he told Ramage. 'The Admiralty asked the Board of Agriculture for someone likely to make plants grow on a barren island, and they recommended me. I'm still not sure if the Board want to get me out of the way for a few months - I'm always chasing them, you know!'

'The Board of Agriculture?' Ramage inquired. 'What does it do?'

'Not enough!' Garret said crossly. 'The office is in Sackville Street and its membership looks like the House of Lords at a Coronation - the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Dukes of Portland, Bedford and Buccleuch, and dozens of earls, among them Chatham and Spencer - you'll recall he was the last First Lord of the Admiralty. And plain politicians - Mr Pitt, the last prime minister and Mr Addington, the present one. You'd think that with such a membership the Board would be very powerful.'

'Yes,' Ramage agreed. 'Archbishops and prime ministers - they should be able to move Heaven and earth!'

'You'd be quite wrong, sir; quite wrong. Apart from Arthur Young, the secretary, they're all nincompoops. Just look at the price of flour and bread. Yet farmers feed grain to their livestock. Your father's not a member!'