Ramage's Devil

'No, no, Travis, don't start pouring Latin words all over me. I'm just a simple Highlander, not one of your brilliant Edinburgh scholars.'

Travis glared at the admiral, sat up straight in the armchair and put the papers back in his case. 'In words of one syllable, sir, Captain Bullivant was in a drunken stupor. He has been having attacks of - if you'll permit me that Latin - delirium tremens, and he was proposing to have the master, a midshipman and a seaman hanged at sunset.'

Clinton's face paled. It took him only a moment to connect the Bullivant family and the Navy Board, the besotted captain of a frigate and the dangers for junior officers, and another moment to realize that the whole problem had landed in his lap like a haggis sliding away from the carver's knife.

'You can testify about the man's medical condition; you don't know about the hangings.'

'I do, sir,' Travis contradicted, and he said with some precision: 'I confirmed the captain's intentions with each of the three men and my witnesses were Captain Ramage and Lieutenant Swan, the first lieutenant of the brig.'

'Very well, doctor, and thank 'ee. I'm sure you have plenty of work waiting for you.'

'I have that,' Travis said. 'You'll be wanting a written report?'

'I'll talk to you about that later.'

As soon as Travis had left the cabin, Clinton looked at Ramage. 'It was as bad as that?'

'Worse, sir. Bullivant was going to shoot me when I came on board: he reckoned I was Satan, too.'

Clinton permitted himself a wintry smile. 'A pardonable error of identification, some might say.'

Ramage gave an equally wintry smile. 'With a loaded pistol at less than five paces, sir.'

'Too close, too close,' Clinton agreed, and turned to Bowen. 'When do you think the drinking started?'

'Years ago, sir. Secret drinking. As the months pass it takes a glass or two more to produce oblivion. Finally the brain is deranged, although at first not all the time. For a long time the patient probably manages to control his drinking so that he stays this side of delirium, but suddenly he is put under a strain - given the command of a ship, for example. He feels himself inadequate so he has an extra glass or two, or three or four. And he passes over the line into delirium. A few hours later he recovers from that particular attack, craves more drink ... and so it goes on. Fifty glasses are not enough; one is too many.'

'How long will it take to cure this man?'

'That is a question better answered by Dr Travis, sir.'

'I am asking you,' persisted the admiral.

'You won't like my answer, sir.'

'When you reach my age and rank you rarely like anyone's answers about anything, so that's not relevant. You were cured of the same thing.'

'Yes, sir, but the cause - what drove me to drink - was not the same.'

Ramage was pleasantly surprised at the way Bowen was carefully making his points: the admiral was leaning forward, like the close relative listening anxiously for the diagnosis.

'What's the difference? A drink is a drink. One man's body is like another. It's the liver isn't it. Gets damaged?'

'It's really the mind, sir,' Bowen corrected gently. 'It's the mind that starts a man drinking, although the liver eventually kills him. The patient we are concerned with started drinking - in my opinion, of course - because it helped him forget his feelings of inadequacy.'

'Inadequacy? Inadequacy?' Clinton turned the word over like a dog with a bone. 'What did he feel inadequate about?'

'Commanding a frigate, sir. He was also unlucky enough to be given the Calypso.'

'Bowen, you are talking rubbish.'

Ramage, too, was startled to hear the surgeon declaring it was Bullivant's bad luck to be given the Calypso, although he thought he understood the rest of the point Bowen was making.

'You asked for my medical opinion, sir, and if you'll allow me, I had one of the best practices in Wimpole Street until I ruined it all with drink. So, drink, drinking, its cause and consequences - that is a subject I know a great deal about. If I was as expert in naval strategy and tactics, I would be the admiral of the red.'

Clinton nodded because for the past few years, as he had begun climbing up the ladder of flag rank, he had been surrounded by sycophants: he found that many captains brave enough in action were too quick with the fawning 'Yes, sir, no sir' in this cabin: he found he still enjoyed seeing an officer's features tauten and hear him say 'If you'll allow me sir' as a preliminary to flatly contradicting a commander-in-chief who could destroy his career with the wave of a hand.

'I appoint you temporarily an admiral of the red wine,' Clinton said dryly. 'So explain his "inadequacy" and why he was "unlucky".'

'As Lieutenant Bullivant on board a ship of the line or a frigate, the patient simply obeyed orders. Sighting land, changes in wind strength or direction, tacking or wearing - every captain's standing orders set down that he is to be called, so the patient never had to decide whether that was a particular headland, whether he had to reef or furl, tack or wear. His whole life at sea was to ask a senior when he was in doubt; to report and obey.'

'Yes, yes, I understand that much,' Clinton said.

'Suddenly - perhaps as a result of patronage, perhaps because he had proved to be a good lieutenant -'

'Perhaps a combination of both,' Clinton interrupted sarcastically.

'Yes,' Bowen agreed, 'perhaps. Anyway, he was suddenly made post and given a frigate in emergency conditions with no previous experience of command: with the war about to start again he was ordered to take over the frigate in Chatham, get her ready for sea immediately - remember, she was in the process of paying off - and join your fleet for blockade duty off Brest, notoriously the worst job the Navy has.'

Clinton nodded encouragingly. 'So far we are only stating in a medical voice what we all know.'

'Agreed, sir; I could have said that in a naval voice. However, I will now proceed, if I may, in my Wimpole Street voice.'

Clinton grinned: he was beginning to like this whimsical sawbones. He had heard enough about young Ramage to know that by now he must be a shrewd judge of men, and had been impressed at Ramage's earlier references to Bowen and his lieutenants and the master. Bowen must have sewn him up a few times too, come to think of it, because Ramage had been wounded often enough.

'You can talk in a Wimpole Street voice, but don't send me a Wimpole Street bill because you're still a ship's surgeon!'

'And I wouldn't exchange any of it.'

'Easy to talk,' Clinton commented.

Ramage said quietly: 'With the late peace, sir, Mr Bowen came with me in the Calypso on a long cruise beyond the Equator.'

Clinton pushed his chair back to the full extent of the chain which secured it to the deck against the ship's roll.

'Hmmp... that only tells me you are loyal if not wise, Bowen, but go on. Your patient' - Ramage noted that Clinton was still keeping the episode at arm's length - 'has just been given a frigate and orders to join my fleet.'

'Well, sir, he's now on his own. When the officer of the deck reports a landfall, a change in wind direction or strength, the decision to reef or furl, tack or wear, the decision what to do is now entirely the patient's: he's alone in his cabin or on the windward side of the quarterdeck. Oh yes, up to a point he can accept the suggestions of the master or the first lieutenant on points of seamanship and navigation, but there are very many decisions which only the captain can make.'

'Yes, yes,' Clinton said impatiently.

'The problem is that our patient,' Bowen said in a flat voice, 'can't bring himself to make those decisions. He suddenly realizes that despite years of training and all the family money and patronage and the fact he has now been given a ship, he's not competent to command it.'