Ramage knew he should talk again to Shirley and his officers before drafting his report. Yet after talking to any of them he came away with the feeling that he had been dreaming; their answers were so incoherent or remote from reality that recalling them later was like trying to remember how you had behaved while drunk at a party.
Captain Shirley had never seen such grim-faced men sitting round his dining table, and he seemed more puzzled than alarmed. Both Wagstaffe and Aitken held pens and had to share the same inkwell as they wrote down the questions, and Shirley's answers, making him slow down or repeat an answer. The demands for repetition were frequent because many of Shirley's answers were difficult to credit.
The Jason was rolling her way along, astern of the convoy, in good weather. Wagstaffe had the big awning stretched over the quarterdeck and the captain's coach, cabin and sleeping place were cool. Ramage had thought deeply about making Shirley move down into one of the officer's cabins in the gunroom but had finally decided to leave him in his quarters and instead put Wagstaffe in the first lieutenant's cabin, making all the lieutenants shift round one.
As soon as Ramage had come on board and Wagstaffe had the frigate under way again (at the speed the convoy was making good, nothing was lost by heaving-to the frigate to avoid getting soaked by spray which would be thrown up if the ship had to tow the Calypso's boat alongside), Shirley - still in his long black coat - had walked over and greeted Ramage.
"Ah, my dear Ramage, how thoughtful of you to pay us a call," he had said in a completely sincere voice, rubbing his hands as though washing them. "Can I persuade you to dine with me this time? No - then a cup of green tea, or a glass of something stronger?"
The man had been genuinely upset when Ramage refused, and again Ramage was reminded of an anxious parson who felt he was being rebuffed by his patron.
Even now, sitting round the dining table, Ramage at the head, Shirley to his left and with Aitken and Wagstaffe on his right, facing Shirley, the man exuded sincerity. Sincerity? Well, again and again Ramage was reminded of the last occasion he had met the Archbishop of Canterbury, who proved to be a most unctuous individual exuding the secretive bonhomie expected of the doorman at one of the better houses of pleasure in Westminster.
Ramage tapped the table to emphasize what he was going to say.
"Captain Shirley, for the eleventh time I must ask you why you raked the Calypso although she was displaying British colours and her pendant numbers, and was flying the correct challenge?"
"My dear Ramage, why should the Jason fire at the Calypso?"
"Don't dodge the question," Ramage snapped. "I am asking you."
"On what authority, pray?"
Ramage waited until Aitken and Wagstaffe had finished writing. It gave him time to think, although God knew he had already given the subject enough thought.
"On the authority of a captain of one of the King's ships trying to discover the reason for a traitorous and treasonable attack by another of the King's ships."
"But no one attacked you, treasonably or traitorously. Ask my officers. Ask my men. You have done so once already, but you have my permission to ask them again."
This man was so calm and cool. Both Wagstaffe and Aitken were perspiring - although that could be from the effort of writing fast and concentrating. But this man Shirley - there was not even a single bead of perspiration on his brow. A belly of pork! Ramage suddenly realized that the man's complexion, dead white and only wrinkled by lines running from each side of his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, reminded him of a familiar sight in a pork butcher's shop. The man's baldness heightened the effect: not only was the skull utterly hairless, but Ramage was sure (probably because of some illness, malaria, perhaps) no hair grew on the man at all. Did he have to shave? There was none of the shadow on his face that most men had by late afternoon (and even earlier in the Tropics, where the heat made hair grow faster).
His eyes were small but unusually widely spaced. However, the nose seemed to belong to another face altogether. This face was cadaverous, the skin tight over the bones, with no pouches beneath the eyes, no hint of middle age in jowls. No, there was not much flesh to wrinkle, apart from the lines beside the nose. But the nose!
It seemed to belong to a much bigger and heavier man; someone with Falstaffian girth and a plump face, and a great club of a nose that commanded attention like a blunderbuss when its owner aimed it. In keeping with the rest of the face it was bloodless, yet for its size one would have expected a healthy pink glow, something that would show up on a dark night.
Both Aitken and Wagstaffe had written down the answer. Ramage looked at Shirley again.
"Have you threatened any of your ship's company so that they are frightened of answering my questions?"
"Why should I? I have nothing to hide! Ask them anything you like, my dear fellow."
"When I asked you to smell the muzzle of that gun - number nine gun on the starboard side - you said you could smell nothing."
"Nor could I! Just the usual blacking, of course."
"In your opinion the gun had not been fired recently?"
"No. Nor was that just my opinion; it was the opinion of the men serving that gun."
"But my officers and those of my men who were asked all smelled burnt powder and gave their opinion that the gun had been fired within the last half an hour."
"Yes, they did, and most singular I found it. Had you threatened them?" Shirley asked archly.
"Why were you the only commission officer on deck when the Calypso came alongside?"
"Apart from two or three midshipmen, who were running messages, my officers have various different duties, of course! Really, Ramage, I do find some of your questions naive."
"Perhaps so, but why were all your officers at that moment confined to their cabins with a Marine sentry guarding the gunroom door?"
"There you are, that's what I mean. You know as well as I do that in a frigate like the Jason or the Calypso there is always a Marine sentry at the gunroom door, just as there is one at the door to the captain's quarters and, in hot weather, at the scuttle butt, so what is so singular about this particular sentry? What is curious is that you choose to go down to the gunroom at a time when the officers are in their cabins. I was on the quarterdeck - you saw me - and surely you agree that I am competent to handle the ship without assistance from some callow lieutenant?"
Ramage had a mental picture of the Jason racing across the Calypso's bow, her shrouds missing the jibboom by inches, but this was not the time to thrash it out: it was not a subject that could be reduced to questions and answers even though, according to lawyers (indeed, the whole legal system), every situation must be, even when a man's guilt, and thus his life, depended on answering yes or no to particular questions. "When did you stop beating your wife?" Everyone but lawyers and judicial authorities had heard that "Answer yes or no" joke but whether a man was on trial for murder or treason, or stealing a trinket or poaching a hare, it was "yes" or "no".
Shirley turned and faced Ramage squarely. "Tell me, my dear fellow, are you attempting to remove me from my command? I am your senior by dozens of places on the Post List, as I am sure you are well aware."