Southwick sniffed and brushed his hands together in a dismissive movement. "That's easily explained," he said. "Our chaps are scared stiff of you. Belly? Here, take this soap pill. Chest? Here, take this soap pill. Head? Ah yes, a soap pill is a sovereign remedy for afflictions of the head. You work miracles, you scoundrel. No matter what any of our fellows may contract, there's nothing that doesn't vanish the moment the sufferer thinks about one of your 'sovereign remedies'."
Bowen looked carefully at the master. "Tell me, old friend, for how long have you been suffering with this acute pain in the back that almost cripples you on a cold, damp day? And those rheumy eyes - shouldn't you be thinking of retiring? Perhaps we could get you a berth somewhere as 'mine host' - the landlord in a comfortable old hostelry with a blazing log fire, a lad to help roll the casks off the brewer's dray when it calls once a month (and lift the kegs of brandy from the smugglers' horses, too), and all you need to do is give a sharp tap to start the bung ..."
Southwick grinned, admitting that Bowen had won this round in the continual teasing between the two of them.
"We were talking about the Jason," Ramage said, "but somehow we became involved in finding Mr Southwick's bung-starter ..."
"Ah yes. Well, sir, I went on board the Jason, as you know, and Captain Shirley was expecting me. He was wearing that black coat but was otherwise quite normal. He invited me down to his cabin and offered me rum, gin or wine: he made rather a point that those were the only choices. But I am afraid that was the only example of slightly strange behaviour, and even that is not very strange if he does not have much choice of drink in his locker."
"So what did you talk about?" Ramage asked.
Bowen laughed quietly, as though enjoying a private joke. "Well, he told me about the surgeon dying, and how good a man he was, then described the size of his sick list and asked if I would examine some of the men. I agreed because it seemed it might give me a good chance of questioning them about other matters of more immediate interest to us. Then, very tactfully (by his standards, but rather like a particularly clumsy bull trying to cross a flower garden undetected), he started to ask me about you, sir."
"Me?" Ramage exclaimed. "What on earth did he want to know about me?"
"He asked in a very roundabout way with about thirty very carefully phrased questions, but there was no doubt what he was asking."
"Bowen, stop grinning like a parson who has just received ten times as much as he expected from Queen Anne's Bounty!"
The more he thought about it, the funnier it seemed to Bowen. "The trouble was, sir, I didn't know what answer to give. It all depended on one's point of view."
"Oh do stop guffawing like a schoolboy. What was Captain Shirley trying to find out?"
"If you were mad, sir."
Ramage joined in the laughter. "What point of view did you put forward, eh?"
"I avoided committing myself," Bowen said.
"Oh, you did. . . well, you could have risked perjury and given a definite answer."
Bowen shook his head. "Remember, sir, I was trying to get Captain Shirley on my side. I told him I could not discuss the condition of a patient with anyone else and he agreed - forgetting that surgeons have to give daily reports on every man reporting sick. He wanted to know how long I had served with you, how often you had been wounded, and so on. He belongs to that school of medical thought (dating back about five hundred years) that believes all madness is the result of a blow on the head. Have you ever had a blow on the head, sir?" Bowen asked innocently.
"No, only on my soup."
Bowen nodded. "I thought as much. Well, Captain Shirley and I talked, and he answered all my questions without hesitation. The only trouble is that when a man behaves quite sanely, it is very difficult (impossible, in fact) for a medical man to frame questions that would reveal insanity. You see, sanity or insanity is not like a fever, fractured limb, rash, sprained ligament or anything like that. I give you an example. Two men are sitting side by side, quietly daydreaming. One man is thinking how much he loves his wife. The other man has just murdered his wife and has her fortune in a leather bag beside his chair. One man is sane, the other insane. But looking at the two of them, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, by talking to them, there is nothing to distinguish the mad one."
Ramage sighed with relief. "That was the feeling that Aitken, Southwick and I had - that the man seemed sane even though he had just behaved like a madman. Been a madman, rather."
"That's the problem, sir. I could take you to Moorfields and we could walk through the wards of Bethlehem Royal Hospital - better known perhaps as Bedlam - and men and women would come up to you and I defy you to distinguish whether they are inmates or visitors like yourself. Oh yes, there are many palpably insane - screaming, making faces, claiming to be Genghis Khan, and so on."
"They are the dangerous ones!" Ramage said.
"Not always, sir. A screaming man who wants to take an axe to all piebald horses is probably less dangerous - because one sees at once that he is deranged. But those only rarely insane are usually not violent."
"You mean, they don't get screaming mad?" Ramage asked. "They just go mad in a quiet way?"
Bowen smiled and acknowledged: "Yes, sir, I admit I may have been simplifying a little too much!"
"Anyway, you learned nothing about Captain Shirley. Very well, then what happened?"
"I then held a sick parade, beginning in the gunroom. The gunner and the third lieutenant were both sick. I noticed that all of them were drunk, in varying degrees. And all of them seemed to be frightened of something. Apprehensive, in the way men would be if they'd been told the day the world would end, and it's next Thursday but they have to keep it secret."
"Did you find out anything from the gunroom?"
"Nothing, except that they're all frightened and drunk. Then I saw about twenty of the rest of the ship's company. Nothing serious: just the 'illnesses' you find in an unhappy ship."
Ramage realized that Bowen had made a shrewd observation that applied to just about every ship in the Navy. Unless there was something about the station (the West Indies and the black vomit, for example) then a glance at the surgeon's journal, more formidably known officially as the Journal of Physical Transactions of the particular ship, probably told you all you needed to know about her captain - and her officers, too. In a well ordered ship there was no need to sham sickness. But the Jason's copy was missing: Bowen had just confirmed that . . .
Which did not get over the fact that Bowen had also confirmed that Shirley's form of madness was easy to hide, and dam' nearly impossible for anyone else to prove. And there was no clue to how (or why) Shirley was holding a whole ship's company in silent terror. Looking on the bright side, he had another frigate to help escort the convoy. In fact by normal standards the convoy now had a strong escort - four frigates for just over seventy ships: almost unheard-of these days. Providing, of course, that the Jason was not entirely useless as a fighting ship: a mad captain and drunken officers did not inspire confidence, but it meant -
"He's senior to you on the Post List, but you command the convoy," Southwick said.
"I've been thinking about that."
Southwick nodded because finding himself and his captain thinking alike was nothing very new. "Mind you, sir, that's not to say he has to obey any orders you give if he doesn't want to."