Lord Spencer would listen attentively - he always did. And then - judging by the tone of this letter - he would probably shake his head politely, without saying anything. Yet it would be clear that he thought Ramage was being melodramatic, imagining much of it and guessing the rest.
Much of it! Much, the Mate, would corroborate everything. But his Lordship would probably say - or think, anyway - that Much was a man with a grudge and consider that he had hoodwinked Ramage. The Bosun's attack with a cutlass? The poor fellow was overwrought... The packetsmen slashing the rigging? Captain Stevens' way of making sure the French could not get the ship under way ... There was no way of describing the dozens of little episodes, each one trifling and apparently meaningless, but which taken all together, like thousands of strokes of an artist's brush, made a clear picture. A look on Stevens' face, a remark of Our Ned's, items of information passed on by Jackson. Probably none of it was evidence acceptable in a court of law - or acceptable to the First Lord either.
Yet how could it be proved in a way that would satisfy a judge and a jury? A judge would ask if the packetsmen insured their ventures and deliberately found a French privateer and surrendered to her. If the answer was no, he would dismiss everything as the chance of war. Would a judge accept that meeting a privateer was simply a bonus; something that happened perhaps once a year? Would a judge - the First Lord, anyway - accept that for men being paid £12 a year, the chance of a profit of £400 was enough for them to surrender their ship - commit treason, in fact?
Well, one thing was certain: lying here fretting would achieve nothing: they just had to wait for the money to arrive ...
Chapter Sixteen
It was a fortnight before the next packet arrived from Falmouth: fourteen days spent mostly on shore in Lisbon. Kerguelen, intrigued with the city after their excursion in the Agent's carriage, insisted that Ramage, Yorke, Bowen and Southwick accompany him on visits to various towns near by, where he showed a lively interest and a surprising knowledge of Manueline Gothic architecture.
On the fourteenth day after the arrival of the last packet - a fortnight of settled weather with a stiff breeze between north and west, just the wind to give the packet a fast passage - Kerguelen joined Ramage and Yorke on deck shortly after dawn, and carrying his telescope.
After greeting them he used the glass to search the river to seaward. Finally he shut it with a snap. "What is it you say in England? 'Watch a pot and it never boils'!"
"Something like that," Yorke said. "No sign of her, eh?"
Kerguelen shook his head. "Give her a day or two." Then he added with a grin, "Perhaps your Government is having trouble finding the money."
"They'll just increase the taxes," Yorke said cheerfully.
Up to that moment Ramage had tried to keep the whole question of the Act of Parliament at the back of his mind. Now, standing on the Lady Arabella's foredeck and watching the fregatas drifting down the Tagus on the ebb tide and finding no sign of the packet's sails on the horizon, the doubts began to flood in. Supposing Opposition Members of Parliament had seized the opportunity to embarrass the Government by opposing the Bill?
Any defeat of a Government bill, however unimportant the actual subject, was regarded as a major triumph for the Opposition. Party politics were supreme; each party was a veritable Moloch frequently demanding the sacrifice of honour and decency - and certainly the fate of a Post Office packet and a miserable lieutenant - if it brought votes.
He turned from watching the skyline of Lisbon. Just along the coast was Cape St Vincent, where he'd lost the Kathleen cutter in the battle that took its name from the Cape. Farther south the coast swung eastward in to a great bight round to the Spanish border and Cadiz, where the Spanish fleet was blockaded. And then Gibraltar, and across the Gut the shore of Africa, lined by the great mass of the Atlas Mountains.
Sailing into the Strait from the Atlantic as dawn broke never ceased to fascinate him. The dark mountains of Spain to larboard would be heavily shadowed, and because a ship usually kept close in to avoid the current, the distant land sounds carried across the water. The insane, agonized braying of donkeys; the occasional heavy thud of a mason chipping stone; the tinny clangour of a village church's tiny bell... The heavy smell of herbs borne seaward by a gentle offshore breeze, and always the mountains of Africa, powder blue in the early light and mysterious like veiled Arab women watching from curtained windows in the narrow streets of Tangier.
How remote London seemed. Whitehall running northward from the Houses of Parliament, with a short turning off it called Downing Street, where the Prime Minister lived in a nondescript house. Five minutes' walk along Whitehall to the Admiralty building set back from the road behind a high screen wall, with a cobbled courtyard in between. And a mile away, in the City itself, the Post Office headquarters at Lombard Street. In four buildings - Parliament itself, the house in Downing Street, the Admiralty building and the one in Lombard Street - men had discussed the Lady Arabella.
By now Government lawyers and Parliament's legal draftsmen would have drawn up a short Act, dipping deep into their enormous store of clichés and redundant phrases. The Act would have been printed and gone through various stages in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. There would have been divisions, with the Members faithfully trooping into the "Ayes" and "Noes" lobbies like flocks of sheep driven into pens to be sheared of their votes. The sheepdogs would be the party whippers-in and the shepherds the party leaders. Should one sheep stray by accident or design into the wrong lobby to cast a vote against his party, then his fleece would be nailed up in one of the whips' offices, a warning to all others.
They were having dinner later the same day when Kerguelen came into the saloon to report that the packet had been sighted running up the Tagus with the flood tide under her. Half an hour later she passed the Lady Arabella, heading for the packet berth a mile farther up the river. The name Princess Louise was picked out in gilt across her transom, and beneath it her port of registry, Falmouth.
"Are you going to see Chamberlain this evening?" Yorke asked.
Ramage shook his head. "We'll wait to hear from him. By the time they've cleared Customs it'll be nearly dark, and I doubt if he'll get the mails off tonight."
"But surely the commander will have the things we're interested in under lock and key in his cabin, won't he?"
Ramage grinned. "Yes, but I don't see any need to give Chamberlain the chance to play 'I'm King of the Castle'. If we go along to his house tonight he can tell us to come back in the morning."
"Hadn't thought of that," Yorke admitted. "You seem to read the minds of these people like a book!"
"Bitter experience. When you're in the Navy you learn quickly enough that the sailors' worst enemies are not the French but the quill-pushers in Government offices like the Navy Board and the Sick and Hurt Board ... It's straightforward dealing with the French - they're only trying to kill you. But the clerks are trying to cheat you or make your life a misery by abusing their authority. Great fun for the clerks, who never think of wives and mothers and children starving because seamen can't send them money. Have you ever seen a man who lost a leg in action hobbling round trying to get the pension to which he's entitled? Sent from one office to another, from Plymouth to London and on to Portsmouth. Ninety per cent of the clerks are stupid or corrupt or lazy. Some are all three."
"And the remaining ten per cent?"
"They run the Navy. To be fair you'll find the percentage is the same elsewhere, at the Horse Guards, the Post Office, the Treasury - in every damned office listed in the Royal Kalendar!"
"Faro," Yorke said, opening a drawer and taking out a pack of cards. "At this point let's drag Bowen and Southwick from the chessboard and play faro."