"What a man," Louis commented in French, but Auguste winked. "What a woman, eh? Can you imagine life with the sister of a man like this?"
"I could, but I'm not going to: most of the time it would be like war! In England are all the women like that?"
"No, most certainly not," Gilbert said, shaking his head with the air of a connoisseur. "I met several I would like to have married."
Jackson said: "You are going about it backwards. I followed what you just said. Under English law if a foreigner marries an Englishwoman he can be pressed, because marrying makes him the same as an Englishman - leastways, as far as the pressgangs are concerned."
"You mean that foreigners are not pressganged?"
"Well, they are sometimes, but they can apply to their consul and be freed."
"So as Frenchmen ... ?"
Jackson frowned, suddenly realizing that of the seven men making up Mess Number Eight in His Majesty's frigate the Calypso, Stafford was the only Englishman.
"As Frenchmen, I suppose you rate as 'enemy' unless you're serving in one of the King's ships. Still, there's one thing about it, when we arrive in England you can marry an Englishwoman without fear of the press because you're already serving!"
"What about you? You're American, aren't you?"
"Yes, but our government gives us things called 'Protections'. These certify that we're American citizens, so we can't be pressed. But if we are, we apply to an American consul, and the Protection should get us freed."
"Why don't you have a Protection, then?" Gilbert asked.
"I've had one for years," Jackson said.
"Then why don't... ?"
Jackson shrugged his shoulders. "I'm too old to change my habits and I like serving with Mr Ramage."
"But supposing you were transferred to another ship, what then?"
"We'll see. Mr Ramage and I have managed to keep together - and Rossi and Staff too - for several years now. And Mr Southwick."
"And Mr Orsini?" Gilbert asked.
"Yes, he's been with Mr Ramage for a couple of years or so. "
"So when we get to England we can all stay together in the Calypso?"
Jackson shrugged again. "It'll depend how the Jason affair turns out. If this Captain Shirley has friends in high places, there's going to be trouble."
"But hasn't Mr Ramage friends in high places too?"
"Yes, but years ago his father - an admiral - was made the scapegoat for some government mistake, and people might attack our Mr Ramage to get at the father."
Gilbert sighed. "Politicians. . . they should all be made to go to that hospital Stafford was talking about."
"I've never heard of a penitent politician," Jackson said. "Anyway, I'll be damned glad when we get a sight of the Lizard and then anchor at Spithead, or Plymouth, or wherever we're sent, so we get the trial or inquiry over quick."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ramage wiped the tip of the quill with the cloth, put the cork back in the inkwell, and started to read through his letter to Their Lordships. The report that would accompany it, seven pages in draft form, waited in the drawer. He had spent a couple of weeks on it: not two weeks of solid writing, but every day he had taken it out and read it through, at first changing whole paragraphs and then towards the end just substituting sentences or changing individual words.
The final draft, which his clerk would write out in a fair hand, did not bear much relationship to the first, in which he had let his anger with Shirley distort the narrative (surprisingly, Alexis had been the first to draw his attention to it), so that it read as though Ramage had expected trouble from the moment he sighted theJason, whereas he had hauled his wind and gone up towards her expecting to find a friend and exchange news.
And that had been the problem in writing the report: to explain to Their Lordships the shock of the sudden attack and, much more difficult, to describe Shirley's behaviour without using phrases which, in condemning Shirley, would put Their Lordships immediately on the side of the senior captain.
Also (and perhaps more important) he had to bear in mind that the Board might be reading his report after receiving one from Shirley. Yorke and Aitken reckoned the advantage would rest with the man whose report was read first, but Ramage was not sure. Viewed from the Boardroom of the Admiralty it was a bizarre and utterly unimportant episode; to Their Lordships, discipline was probably the main question. For one British frigate to have fired on another could be an accident - that would be their first reaction. Then from both Shirley and himself they would read stories which (he assumed) flatly contradicted each other. Bowen had already reported, after his visit to the Jason, that Shirley regarded the Calypso's captain as mad, and no one in the Calypso had any doubt about Shirley. But what about all those silent men in the Jason: officers and men who did and saw nothing . . . How would the Board regard them?
The whole story, whether from the point of view of the Jason or the Calypso, sounded mad: that was Alexis's view, and she had argued that Their Lordships would naturally tend to disbelieve the first report they read. So, she said, Ramage must make sure that Shirley's was the first to arrive. Then, with Their Lordships completely puzzled by Shirley's description, along would come Ramage's report which would supply the answer (without saying it in as many words) - that Shirley was mad.
Alexis's argument (with which Southwick agreed) was a good one until one started thinking about other letters that Shirley might be writing: what friends he had who, to be fair to them, might not have any idea of Shirley's lapses into madness.
Well, it would not be long now. With the Lizard in sight and the Liverpool, Dublin and Glasgow ships, eighteen of them, formed up as a small convoy and sent off yesterday for the St George's Channel with L'Espoir, and the ten Bristol ships separated this morning with La Robuste, the Calypso was left with forty-four ships, most of which were bound for London, Hull and Leith, after first anchoring in Plymouth to see if there were any last-minute orders from their owners. Often the shippers of a cargo originally consigned for, say, London had a better offer by the time the ship arrived in England, involving delivery to another port, and Plymouth was well placed if a ship then had to go to, say, Liverpool.
Ramage had quite expected the Jason to leave the convoy and go on ahead to Plymouth or Spithead, and she did so long before the Lizard was in sight. So far (with only a few score more miles to go) it had been a successful voyage for the convoy. Most of the slow ships had responded well to being hurried; only two gales had hit the convoy and although both had scattered the ships, in each case the convoy had re-formed within a day. Then, in a final gesture, as the St George's Channel ships formed up into a small convoy to leave and the Calypso had sailed among them, helping L'Espoir, first one and then the remaining seventeen ships had fired an eleven-gun salute to the Calypso with their men lining the rails and cheering.
This gesture, combining their farewell with a genuine thank you, was not lost on the Bristol ships which this morning had also fired a salute as they were led off by La Robuste.
Now the Calypso frequently sighted other ships. One sloop coming down Channel had reported that a small convoy from the Cape of Good Hope and a larger one from the East Indies were already in the Channel bound for Spithead, and Ramage breathed a sigh of relief that the convoys had not met off the Lizard. There would have been collisions and confusion, Southwick commented, and Aitken added that a gale would probably have arrived as well to act as the spoon that stirred the brew.