"Yes, it would be," Shirley agreed. "By the way, do I address you as 'my Lord' or just Ramage? I've heard it said you don't use your title in the Service."
"Ramage will do. Why did you open fire?"
Shirley shook his head sorrowfully, as though regretfully refusing some importunate request. "Must have been some other ship, my dear Ramage. Anyway, now we've settled that, I hope you can be persuaded to stay and dine with me. That is one of the complaints I have about the King's Service: at sea and on foreign stations one does meet such a poor class of person, and that is why it's such a pleasure to meet you."
Ramage gestured to him. "Come with me." He walked over to one of the starboard guns, ordered the crouching men to stand upright, and told the captain of the gun to step forward.
The man was in his early thirties, clean shaven, his hair tied in a neat queue. He had a green cloth tied round his forehead to absorb perspiration and did not wear a shirt above his white duck trousers.
"Name and rate?" Ramage asked.
"George Gooch, sir, rated able."
"Very well, Gooch. Tell me, have you fired this gun today?"
The man glanced at Shirley, looked down at the deck and said woodenly: "No, sir; ain't fired no gun."
Ramage nodded towards Jackson, who walked to the muzzle and sniffed. "It's been fired recently, sir. Inside half an hour."
"What have you to say to that?" Ramage asked Gooch. The man shook his head and refused to look up.
Ramage took Shirley's arm. "Come, Mr Shirley, let's examine that muzzle ourselves."
"By all means." He stood back a pace and made a sweeping gesture indicating that Ramage should lead the way.
Ramage bent down at the muzzle. The smell of burnt powder was unmistakable. He pointed. "Smell that," he told Shirley.
The man clasped his hands behind his back and bent forward. He inclined his body, Ramage thought, like the patient parent leaning over to listen to a mumbling child. "Well?" Ramage demanded.
"I can smell nothing, but I have a poor sense of smell anyway."
Aitken and Southwick had come down the other side of the gun.
"This one has been fired; those on the larboard side haven't, sir," Southwick said firmly. "I'll check all these on the starboard side." With that he turned and made his way along the row of guns, ducking under barrels and holding his sword clear, sniffing at the muzzles like a terrier at rabbit holes.
"Please wait with these men," Ramage told Shirley and gestured to Jackson to guard him. He noted that Kenton was standing by the men at the wheel giving them orders while Martin was busy with a party of men, helping bear off the Calypso.
With Aitken beside him he made for the officers' cabins.
"What do you make of it, sir?" a bewildered Aitken asked. "Seems like a dream to me: each time you reach out to touch something you find it has no substance, as though everything was made of smoke."
"And we're trying to shovel it," Ramage said sympathetically. "But no, I haven't anything more than a suspicion. Captain Shirley looks crazy enough to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Have you noticed he's not perspiring under that black coat?"
"He's not moving very much, either, sir," Aitken pointed out.
Ramage led the way down the companionway, blinking for a few moments in the half-light. But within five paces of the gunroom, a burly Marine lunged forward with a musket and bellowed: "Halt, who goes there?"
Ramage stopped and inquired in a quiet, polite voice: "Who are you expecting?"
"That's none of your business," the man snarled, taking another pace forward.
"Do you recognize my uniform?" Ramage asked, his voice still low. "And the officer beside me?"
"Aye, I recognize both uniforms but they don't mean nothing to me. Captain Shirley's the only one I take orders from."
"Not even from the Marine captain or lieutenant commanding your detachment?"
" 'Specially not 'im; 'e's one o' them."
"Who are 'they'?" Ramage inquired sympathetically.
"That lot in there," the Marine said, turning and pointing with his musket. He turned back to find Ramage's pistol aiming at his right shoulder, the eye looking along the barrel deep-set, brown, and as far as he could see, without a glimmer of mercy in it.
"Tell me," Ramage said, "don't you think it would be a wise insurance to take your right hand away from the trigger and then hand your musket over to the lieutenant standing beside me?"
The man's right hand came clear; he was making the movement unmistakable. He gave the musket to Aitken as though presenting a large bunch of flowers.
"Where are the other Marines?" Ramage demanded.
"Dunno, sir. On deck, I 'spect. I'm not due to be relieved for 'bout half an hour, I reckon."
"Who are you guarding in there?"
The Marine looked puzzled, as though Ramage's question was one even an imbecile could answer.
Ramage, feeling himself near the answer to the whole puzzle, jabbed his pistol for emphasis, wanting to hear what the sentry had to say before blundering into the half-darkness of the gunroom, whose occupants were regarded as dangerous enough to require a Marine guard.
"Guarding, sir?" The man misunderstood his meaning, and Ramage realized the two senses in which the word could be used, to protect, or to prevent escaping. "Well, sir, they're all in there; the whole bloody lot."
"Damnation, man, who are 'the whole bloody lot'?"
"Why, sir, all the commission and warrant officers. Them wot mutinied!"
Commission and warrant officers mutinying? Against a captain who was walking the quarterdeck wearing a long black coat and denying that every gun in his starboard broadside had just raked the Calypso? Aitken was right: all this had the insubstantial atmosphere of a dream! If only he could wake up and find the Jason, the man in the black coat and the gunroom full of alleged mutineers had all vanished, and his steward had brought him a cup of proper coffee bought in Barbados, whence it had been smuggled from somewhere on the Spanish Main.
But this was no dream: he was down below in the Jason with his pistol held at the head of a Marine who was startled to find that Ramage did not know the gunroom was full of mutinous officers.
Aitken, realizing that Ramage intended to walk into the gunroom, said hurriedly: "Wait, sir, I'll get Rennick and a brace of our Marines. They can flush them out. Come with me," he said sharply to the Marine, gesturing with the musket, and disappearing up the companionway.
Ramage, left alone, listened to the slap of the water against the hull - he should have given orders for the Jason to be hove-to, before she and the Calypso were carried too far to leeward of the convoy. And those two newly promoted captains - would they protect the convoy while he was away? Supposing French privateers out of Guadeloupe suddenly attacked, just a couple of them from different directions: would La Robuste and L'Espoir be able to drive them off? They were powerful and weatherly enough, but no ship was better than her captain. And anyway, the commander of the convoy was standing in half darkness outside a gunroom door, waiting for some Marines to act as good shepherds.
Yet Aitken was right: he was the commander of the convoy, not the leader of a boarding party, and if the convoy came to any harm, Their Lordships would quite reasonably want to know what the devil he was doing.
He stuck the pistol back in his belt, suddenly conscious that his wrist ached from holding it. Damn and blast, all he wanted to do was get this wretched convoy safely back to England and find out what had happened to Sarah. The devil take frigates commanded by men who looked like run-amok prelates in long black coats and whose gunroom (according to a Marine sentry) was full of mutinous officers.