Ramage's Devil

'Hell seems the right word: he seems obsessed, with it. He recognized me as the Devil when I came on board.'

'Oh yes, Satan is very real to him. For the past five or six days this ship has reeked of brimstone. The captain had all the lieutenants sprinkling the quarterdeck with holy water laced with brandy in an attempt to exorcize it, but without success.'

'This conversation never took place,' Ramage remarked, 'so tell me the story from the beginning.'

'Well, you know a good deal of the circumstances if you remember how I came to serve with you in the Triton brig,' Bowen said with disconcerting frankness.

'There are two kinds of heavy drinkers: those who drink secretly until they are stupefied, and those who don't give a damn and get drunk openly. Captain Buliivant is a secret drinker, so no one - except perhaps his family and his wife if he is married - knows. But from my own experience I can tell you he has been drinking hard for years. Four or five years, anyway: look at the veins under the skin of his face, at his nose, at his eyes when they are open. And he looks ten or twenty years older than he is.'

'But when he joined the ship,' Ramage prompted.

'Ah, yes. We had fallen behind in paying off the ship because of difficulties with the dockyard, and just as well. We (that is, Mr Aitken, because of course you were on leave) suddenly received orders to commission the ship at once, and the dockyard commissioner warned us war was likely again any moment. He also said that if you did not return from France in time, the First Lord would appoint a new captain.

'We had the ship ready in what must be record time and Captain Bullivant appeared and read himself in as the new commanding officer. Very brisk, he was, and delighted with everything Aitken and Southwick had done. He made a very good impression on every person who saw him, except one man.'

'And that was you.' It was a comment, not a question.

'Yes, I knew the symptoms which no one else ever recognizes. The constant sweating, the tiny tremor of the fingers when the hands are extended, the slightly glazed appearance of the eyes and the feeling they are never quite in focus, the smell of cashews on the breath ... the apparent temperance and lack of interest in wine and spirits. When his luggage was brought on board, I had a word with Jackson and he made sure each trunk was checked. One clinked - full of bottles, carefully packed and only two loose ones.'

'And after he had read himself in?'

'All went well the next day: orders arrived from the Admiralty to proceed to Plymouth and put ourselves under Admiral Clinton's command. We were off the Nore that night and we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the Harwich fishing fleet. Aitken sent for the captain, who came up on deck so stupefied he could not stand without holding on to something. That was the first time we heard him see the Devil.'

'What did he look like?' Ramage asked.

'Well, we didn't see him since he only existed in the fumes affecting Captain Bullivant's brain, but we certainly heard where he was: about fifty yards on one bow and then on the other, preparing to rake us.'

'With empty bottles, I suppose.'

Bowen grinned as he shook his head. 'No, he was on the fo'c'sle of a three-decker which was "painted in orange stripes like a glorious sunset" - Captain Bullivant's exact words, though he didn't explain how he distinguished colour in the dark. All this took the lieutenants and Southwick by surprise, sir: I had kept my earlier observations to myself - I had not realized he had reached the stage of recurrent delirium tremens. I was mistaken: I should have warned Aitken.'

'But the Calypso did not sink any of the fishing vessels?'

'No, mercifully. Anyway, eventually I quieted down the captain and got him back to bed. Next morning he was - to the layman's eyes - perfectly normal, but in the secrecy of this cabin he drank himself into a stupor every night until we arrived in Plymouth ... There Aitken talked to me about reporting it all to Admiral Clinton.'

'What was your advice?'

'Well, sir, I thought of my own cunning when you and Southwick were trying to cure me and decided Captain Bullivant was a clever man, well aware of his weakness and with enough influence at the Navy Board through his contractor father to make useless anything we could do. Admiral Clinton was busy getting his fleet to sea, so if Aitken had appeared in the flagship with a story of Satan stalking the Calypso, I suspect we would have been sent a new first lieutenant, not a new captain.'

'So the Fleet sailed. Then what happened?'

'Well, that was all Captain Bullivant was waiting for: he left the entire running of the ship to Aitken. He gave orders that he was "not to be bothered with signals", and that Aitken was to execute all orders from the flagship "without troubling" him. From this we expected he would stay drinking down here in his cabin, but every now and again he would emerge raving about the Devil. He would chase him out of his cabin and up the companionway to the quarterdeck, and would then sight him behind the binnacle, behind a carronade, trying to climb the ratlines...'

'Was there anything you could do?'

'Frankly none of us had the courage. If we had bundled him below and he had later remembered it, any of us - Marine, seaman or officer - could be tried for striking a superior officer, or mutiny. So we all looked for Satan, exorcized the quarterdeck...'

'That signal for the physician?'

'That was when his delirium was reaching the crisis. Yesterday he had the ship's company mustered aft and inspected them.'

'Well, there's nothing unusual about that,' Ramage commented, feeling he ought to say something, however mild, in Bullivant's defence.

'No, sir, unless you are looking for the Devil himself - and find him hiding in the bodies of three men!'

'Which three?' asked a flabbergasted Ramage.

'The seaman Rossi, the Marchesa's young nephew Paolo Orsini - and Southwick!'

'I can understand Rossi and Orsini - they have sallow complexions and black hair. But Southwick - I always think he looks like a bishop.'

'That's exactly what Captain Bullivant said! He denounced Southwick because he said it was impossible for a bishop to be serving as the master in one of the King's ships, therefore he must be the Devil in disguise.'

'But how did this cause a crisis?'

'He swore he would hang a Devil a day until the ship was free of them. Southwick was the first and due to be executed at sunset today.'

'But the men would never haul on the rope!' Ramage said. The whole thing was unthinkable.

'Sir,' Bowen said very seriously, 'the minute he gives anyone an order and is disobeyed, that's a breach of enough Articles of War for a death sentence at a court-martial...'

'So... ?'

'So, I told Aitken that the only way out was to use "medical grounds" to get the admiral involved. I had a plan in case that failed (the signal for the physician of the fleet, I mean) but I couldn't then be sure it would work. Luckily it did when I used it...'

'The tankard of brandy and the flask?'

'Yes, sir. It's the timing that is difficult. To judge how much is needed to tip the man over the edge into oblivion - well, that depends on how much he has drunk in the previous few hours, and whether he has eaten.'

'You timed it perfectly.'

'I thought all was lost when he threw the tankard at your head. Thank goodness you realized what I had in mind.'

'I was very slow. I was surprised to see you offering him more drink. Then, quite honestly, I remembered what used to happen when Southwick and I were curing you.'

'"Completing my medical education" would be a more tactful word, sir, than "curing"!'

'As you wish. Anyway, thank you. On my behalf and the three Devils'!'