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.
Supposing the captain was not mad. Supposing, instead, that the officers had mutinied. What happened now? Captain Ramage had the responsibility of sorting it all out, along with nursing his convoy, and he owed the Yorkes a dinner, he thought irrelevantly, but found he liked thinking about them. Sidney owned a fleet of merchant ships that were among the best kept and best sailed at sea today, and he was an amusing, erudite and lively host, apart from having become one of Ramage's closest friends. Strange how he had so few friends. Yet not so strange really, because most of his adult life had been spent at sea, where the only people he met were naval officers (with the exception of Sidney).
A clattering on the companion ladder heralded Aitken, followed by Rennick, Southwick (his great sword in hand), Sergeant Ferris and several Marines. Ramage moved back a few steps to make room for them all, and to avoid explanation and any more delay, pulled both pistols from his belt, cocked them and then kicked open the flimsy door of the gunroom, striding in with the shout: 'No one move!'
No one moved because the gunroom itself was empty: the table in the centre was bare, there was a form at each of the long sides and a chair at either end, and all round were the doors of the officers' cabins. Hats hung on hooks over several of them, and there were empty racks which normally held swords, telescopes and pistols. But in view of the heat, it was significant that all the doors were shut. Ramage stood by the table until the men behind him had come into the gunroom, pistols and cutlasses at the ready.
Rennick's whole stance showed that he considered this was a job for the Marines, and remembering how there had been no work for them as sharpshooters, Ramage told him: 'All right, look into the cabins one at a time, starting at that end.'
Rennick did not wait for Ferris or one of the Marines: instead he stepped forward quickly, pistol in his left hand, and flung the door open. Inside a man crouched on a small, folding stool that took up the space left by the cot and small chest of drawers.
'Out!' Rennick snarled, 'slowly, with your hands clasped in front of you.'
The deckhead was too low for a man to hold up his arms: everyone in the gunroom was having to crouch, and Ramage pulled round a chair and sat down. Whatever was going on, there would be no violence. The officer now coming out of the cabin which was neatly labelled '1st Lt' looked as if he had not slept for a month nor changed his clothes.
'Sit here,' Ramage said, pointing to the form on his left. 'If you are the Jason's first lieutenant, tell me your name and explain why you are skulking in your cabin.'
'Ridley, sir.'
'That answers my first question ...'
The man ran a finger along the grain of the deal table but avoided looking up at Ramage, who examined the man's pale and unshaven face closely.
'Ridley,' he said quietly, 'you haven't been up on deck for two or three weeks.' He recalled the man's stiff gait. 'And I doubt if you've been out of your cabin, either. Why?'
'My duties kept me down here,' the man said sheepishly, his eyes still fixed on the table.
Ramage pointed to the next door.
Rennick flung it open and another man came out. Ramage glanced up at the lettering over the door and waved the man to sit next to Ridley.
'Are you the third lieutenant?'
'Yes, sir. Owens. Henry Owens.'
'And what are you doing in your cabin at a time like this?'
'Captain's orders, same as Mr Ridley.'
'When were you last on deck?'
'I... er, I'm not sure, sir. Within the last two or three weeks, I think.'
Ramage sighed and looked up at Southwick. 'Is everything all right on deck?' When the master nodded, Ramage signalled to Rennick, who opened the door over
