Ramage and the Renegades

'It's issued by the Navy Office, not the Admiralty, and it certainly does not prove the Navy Board believe you. Describe the Chaplain General,' Ramage said suddenly.

The question took Stokes completely unawares. 'Well, he's - he's rather like me. No, perhaps taller. A very nice man; sympathetic, and concerned that the Navy has only the best men as chaplains ...'

'What does he look like?' Ramage persisted. 'Bald, white hair, grey, black, fifty years old or eighty? Does he walk with a limp? Deep voice or shrill?' He had seen him once at Lord Spencer's, and like many such clerics who owed their position to patronage, the Chaplain General was portly and pink, but his nose was an object few would forget: it was purple, bulbous and almost incredibly long, like an elephant's trunk. Also the voice emerging from the bulky cleric was little more than a squeak; not a voice to fill a modest drawing room, let alone a vast cathedral.

Stokes shrugged his shoulders. As the fainting fit receded in his memory and the word 'warrant' obviously took on the role of a talisman, his cunning was returning and with it a shoddy bravado. 'Can't remember; I only saw him for a moment or two.'

'If you saw the Chaplain General only once and at a distance there are things about him you would remember.'

'Well, I don't, and that's that.'

'Get up,' Ramage said, the quietness of his voice making both Southwick and Aitken prepare to move swiftly. Stokes, too, realized that there was a change of mood in the cabin. 'Take off that surplice.'

'Whoa, my Lord!' Stokes protested, 'you can't give orders like that to a man of the cloth!'

'I know, but you are a vagabond, not a man of the cloth, and I'm not having vagabonds walking about this ship disguised as men of God. Take it off or the Marine sentry will strip you bare.'

Stokes suddenly realized that the quiet voice was a danger signal. Swaying and frightened, he pulled off the surplice and cassock and stood in his underwear, holding them out to Ramage like a peace offering.

'What happened?' Ramage asked.

'When, sir?' Stokes was admitting defeat, but now fright was changing to panic.

'How did you get that warrant?'

'It's all legal, sir,' the man whined. 'I wrote to the Chaplain General applying for a position in one of the King's ships, and saying I looked forward to visiting foreign countries. I enclosed a recommendation from the Bishop of London and the Dean of Westminster.'

'How did you get them?'

'Oh, that was easy. I knew their names and styles, you see.'

'How did that get you recommendations?' Ramage asked, puzzled by Stokes's patient explanation of what seemed so obvious to him.

'Well, it means I got all the details right in the letters of recommendation. I write a fair hand and a change of pen is a change of style.'

'Oh, you forged them!'

'Of course, sir,' Stokes said contemptuously. 'I got my new name out of a University register, so if anyone looked up Percival Stokes they'd see he had a good degree and was a clerk in holy orders. The Chaplain General was ill and his secretary accepted my letters, and the next thing was an Admiralty messenger delivered my warrant and orders to report to "His Majesty's ship Calypso, frigate". And I did.'

'So you are not "Percival Stokes"?'

'Not likely!' the man said scornfully. 'Percival - what a name. No, the Reverend Percival Stokes lives in Bristol, according to the University register.'

'What's your name, then? Your real name?'

'Robert Smith.'

'Very well, Robert Smith. What debts are you bolting from?'

'Well, there are several,' he admitted.

'Were all your creditors taking you to court?'

'Well, no, only one, but the others would have the minute they heard about it.'

'How large is that one debt?'

'Sixteen pounds.'

Southwick sniffed and Aitken grinned: they could see the way their captain's mind was working.

'Listen carefully, Smith. I can stop a ship returning to England and have you landed under an arrest, charged with impersonation, defrauding the Admiralty, and various other things that will put you in the Bridewell - the Bridewell, not the Marshalsea - for several years, and when you're released your creditors will still be there waiting to pop you in the Marshalsea. Or . . .'

Smith was now pale and shaking; the perspiration was pouring down his face and he was too panic-stricken to lift a hand to wipe it away. He was watching Ramage, waiting for the next words.

'Or what, sir?' he exclaimed.

'Well, the Navy won't surrender a seaman for a civil debt of £20 or less. Although we're now at peace, the wartime laws concerning our seamen still apply. If you want to volunteer for the Navy, you're free to do so. Sleep on it and tell Mr Southwick tomorrow morning. In the meantime Mr Aitken will tell the purser to issue you with a hammock. Now, clear your gear out of the cabin you've been using and get forward!'

Smith almost ran through the door, remembering to keep his head down.

Aitken said: 'Not one of the King's best bargains, sir!'

'No, but it's got him out of the gunroom.'

'Aye, and for that many thanks, sir.'

'And as soon as we meet another of the King's ships, we can transfer him.'

Southwick said, 'I have to admit I admire the rogue, sir. Fancy forging references from the Bishop of London and the Dean of Westminster! He was lucky the Chaplain General was ilclass="underline" if there'd been an interview ... he doesn't look much like a chaplain.'

'I've seen worse,' Ramage said, 'even if they smell fresher, but I admire him, too.'

CHAPTER EIGHT

Because Ramage hated all the paperwork attached to commanding one of the King's ships he set aside one complete afternoon a week. On that day his clerk brought him the pile of forms, reports and letters that he had to read or sign - rarely both - and Aitken and Southwick trod carefully, knowing the captain would be ill-tempered and, so the master claimed, equipped with a magic shovel that in a couple of seconds could make a mountain out of a molehill.

He opened the muster book, curious to read the latest entry. Robert Smith was now entered and rated a landman. He was noted down as being thirty-eight years old and born in Peckham, London. The purser had dated the entry the day before the Calypso sailed from Chatham. In that way, Smith would be paid from the day he joined the ship - but at the rate of a landman, not a chaplain. Ironically the pay was about the same; it was the 'groats' that lined a chaplain's pocket.

Closing the muster book, he looked at the muster table, and then at a single sheet of paper which showed all that was known and needed to be known about the ship's company of the Calypso on her first voyage in peacetime. Ironically the form was still drawn in the usual wartime wording.

There were four 'classes' of men - ship's company, Marines, supernumeraries 'victuals and wages' and supernumeraries 'victuals only'. Each of these four had then to be placed in one of five categories, 'Borne' (which meant carried on the Calypso's books), 'Mustered' (paraded and answering their names as read from the muster book), 'Checqued' (not on parade but their presence on board confirmed), 'Sick on shore', and 'In prizes'.

So today the Calypso's ship's company totalled ('borne') 211, with 199 mustered and 12 checqued, with none sick on shore or away in prizes. The figure sixteen appeared in the 'supernumeraries victuals and wages' column because in addition to the dozen masons and bricklayers, the surveyors and draughtsmen were being paid and fed as part of the ship's company, while the figure two in the 'supernumeraries victuals only' showed that the botanist and the artist were being fed but not paid - the Admiralty or Navy Board had made some private arrangement.