"Ramage and the Freebooters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pope Dudley)

CHAPTER NINE

Ramage looked up from the desk as the door opened. From outside a man said: 'You thent for me, thir?'

The blasted fellow had forgotten his false teeth.

'Come in, Bowen.'

The surgeon shuffled in like a sleepwalker, walking in a reasonably straight line but only because what would have been staggers to left and right were being counteracted by the Triton's rhythmic rolling.

Bowen had once been tall, and, despite a weak mouth, handsome. And from what Southwick said, once an excellent surgeon in London with a long list of fashionable patients. Then, for reasons no one knew, Bowen found his hand preferred reaching for a glass of gin rather than a scalpel.

Ramage looked up at the man again, hating what he had to do. Bowen's carriage had obviously once been proud and erect; but now—even allowing for me low headroom in the cabin—the shoulders were hunched and his head rested athwart them as though the neck had all but given up trying to do its job. Both arms hung loosely, the muscles slack, and being long they gave him an ape-like appearance.

But the clothing and the face revealed the full story. His shirt, greasy with dirt, obviously hadn't been off his back for a fortnight; the coat and breeches were stained by liquor slopping from glasses held by a shaking hand, and the humidity was producing a crop of mildew.

The face was grey; not the greyness of someone rarely in the sun, but the greyness of a very sick man. The cheeks sagged and the mouth hung open, lips slack, as if the muscles were too gin-sodden to hold the flesh in place. There was a slight hint the muscles on the left side were still trying because the right side of the mouth hung lower, the lop-sided effect increased by a habit of permanently tilting his head to the right. His grey hair, just pushed clear of the brow, was greasy and unkempt, matted together like a wet deck mop.

Ramage thought sourly he could well be one of the wretched, liquor-sodden creatures loitering outside some sordid gin palace, pleading with the potman for a glass of swipes or begging a penny from a customer for a drop of gin. Yet almost unbelievably those long and still delicate fingers, now trembling and spasmodically clenching, had been capable of fine and delicate surgery; that brain, now lost in the befuddling fog of gin fumes, could diagnose and treat complex illnesses. Although any man's death was a tragedy, sometimes the way a man lived was worse.

'Sit down, Bowen.'

The man nodded gratefully and stupidly, groping for the chair and lowering himself into it. Then slowly be raised his head and tried to focus his eyes on his captain.

At that point Ramage realized that in all the past days and hours of thinking about the man, he had not only failed to think of a solution, but now couldn't think what to say.

Yet ironically his position was the reverse of that of a doctor. He knew what the illness was, but until he knew what caused it neither he nor the medical world could cure it. What made a man crave liquor to the exclusion of everything? Perhaps Bowen----- 'I'm afraid I haven't had much chance to get to know you, Bowen.'

'Thmy fault, thir—I've been too beathly drunk to be fit company for anyone.'

The answer was so honest Ramage began to feel sympathetic.

'Perhaps. Tell me, how old are you?'

'Fifty, thir; old enough to know better and too old to do anything about it'

He had obviously long since given up the struggle: Ramage sensed the man now had no desire to change.

'And how long in the Service?'

Bowen was obviously thinking hard, groping in his memory as if in a dark room scrabbling for something in a drawer.

'Two yearth, thir.'

Ramage, who constantly fought an inability to pronounce the letter 'r' when he was excited, knew he couldn't stand a long conversation with a man who lisped and hissed.

'Sentry! Pass the word for my steward! Now, Bowen, where the devil have you left your teeth?'

'I... I... I can't remember, thir.'

'Think, man! You had them for breakfast, didn't you?'

'No... didn't eat breakfatht.'

'Supper, then.'

'Nor thupper; at leatht, I don't think mo.'

Douglas, the steward, appeared as Ramage realized the man probably hadn't eaten a proper meal for days, if not weeks.

'Douglas, Mr Bowen has mislaid his teeth. They're in his cabin somewhere—fetch them, please.'

As Douglas left, Ramage turned back to the surgeon.

'How long have you been drinking like this?'

'Like what, thir?'

The voice revealed he was—well, not exactly cringing, nor trying to seem innocent. Ashamed? Yes! So perhaps there was the remnant of pride there, and he prayed it had not sunk too deep.

'Don't play the fool,' Ramage said harshly, hoping the man would soon be completely sober, and that a few hard words would speed up the process. 'You're a gin-sodden wreck; just a pig swilling from a trough. Now, how long have you been drinking like this?'

Pressing his hands to his temples, Bowen seemed to be trying to stop his head spinning. He stared at the deck a few inches in front of Ramage's feet and said in a near whisper:

'Three yearth, thir.'

'For a year before you joined the Service?'

'Yeth . . .'

'In other words, your first year's drinking wrecked your life. Eventually only the Navy would employ you as a doctor?'

'I thuppothe thath true, thir: I hadn't thought of it.'

Douglas knocked at the door, came in and discreetly handed the surgeon his teeth as though they were a pair of spectacles.

He left the cabin and Ramage busied himself with some papers while Bowen fitted them, fumbling with shaking hands.

'Thank you, sir.'

Ramage nodded and turned bade to face him.

'Tell me, Bowen, he said conversationally, 'when you were a doctor in London, I imagine you often had patients who drank too much and came to you for treatment?'

'I'm afraid so, sir. Drink's a curse which afflicts the rich and poor alike. Cheap gin or expensive brandy—the effect, medically speaking, is just the same.'

'If it isn't cured, I suppose the patient dies?'

'Invariably. The liver, you see: it can't stand the damaging effect of all that liquor.'

Ramage realized Bowen was now talking in a completely detached manner; once again a doctor discussing a medical problem. Well, he thought grimly, maybe 'physician, heal thyself might work.

'What do doctors consider the chances of effecting a cure? How many, say in a hundred cases?'

'Depends entirely on the patient, sir. And on his family and friends. No nostrums can cure. Fashionable quacks prescribe expensive medicines and treatments, but the patients the or go mad and the quacks get rich...'

'But what starts a man drinking so excessively? I mean, not every hard drinker gets like—well permanently besotted.'

'Well, that's hard to say. Most people drink a normal amount—a glass of claret, a sherry, port, a good brandy after dinner. Hot toddy on a cold night. They have a drink because it tastes well, it livens the spirit...'

'But that's far removed from being drunk all the time.'

'Yes, that's the puzzling part. It's not a fashionable view among medical men, but I think it is an illness, like a fever. It affects some and not others. Like yellow jack. It strikes down one man and leaves another.'

Ramage was interested now, conscious that something quite different was emerging from the drunken man seated in front of him. Bowen's voice was becoming brisk and assured. Although the words were slightly blurred, for he was not yet fully sober, here was the man of medicine talking to the brother of a patient.

'You see, sir, the strange thing is you can take two men and each can drink the same amount. Wine with the midday meal, wine and brandy at supper. Perhaps several brandies. Now one of those men will, all his life, drink the same amount with no difficulty. He'll never feel the need to drink more.

'But the other man,' Bowen continued, his eyes brighter now and emphasizing his words with a wagging finger, 'will find he starts having just one more drink on each occasion. Particularly in the evening. One more, then another. He doesn't get particularly drunk—until perhaps one evening he's enjoying an argument, or quarrels with his wife, or something is worrying him. Then he gets very drunk. The next morning...'

Ramage nodded. He knew the feeling, though in his case because he'd drunk more in one evening than he had the previous month.

'Yes,' Bowen said sharply. 'Next morning he feels terrible. But by midday he has got over it. But it happens a few days later. And again and again. Then some friend offers him a drink before breakfast one morning when he feels dreadful. The friend assures him one drink will make him feel better. The thought is revolting because his head is throbbing, mouth dry, stomach upset... But he takes the drink... And almost immediately he does feel better.

'That,' he almost shouted, pounding his knee with his fist, 'that's tie moment the illness starts. I am certain that's the point when the liquor has so penetrated the man's essential parts that he's lost.

'But of course he doesn't know it. On the contrary, he thinks he has made a discovery more important than finding a way of changing base metals into gold: he's learned he can get vilely drunk but next morning feel no after-effects—as long as he can have just one drink.'

'Just one?' Ramage's eyebrows lifted in disbelief.

'Ah!' Bowen said knowingly. 'He thinks it's only one, and one's enough for a while. Then comes the day—the second stage of the fever, in fact—when one isn't enough. He needs two to stop the headache, settle the bile, focus the eyes, stop the slight tremble which has begun to affect his hands. Then as the weeks go by it's three, four, five—and he's drunk by noon."

'By this time he's past curing?'

Bowen shrugged his shoulders. 'By this time his life is collapsing, unless he is a man of leisure. If he's a professional man—a man of medicine, for instance—he finds his patients complaining he's drunk when he examines them at ten o'clock in the morning, so he sucks cashews to disguise the smell on his breath. His wife begins to complain, and he gets angry with her. A friend might drop hints. Then he suddenly finds many of his patients are calling in other doctors.'

'But are his actual abilities affected by then?'

'I don't know,' Bowen admitted. 'Probably, because he's not so alert, and he'll be getting worried. Fewer patients means having fewer bills...

'Anyway,' he continued, 'the man has already begun to feel ashamed. He's already keeping a bottle hidden away, so he can have his first drinks of me day in secret. At first he thought it was secret; then he discovers everyone knows. That makes him more ashamed. Then he swears he won't have a drink before noon—but noon gets earlier every day, and so does the evening for his evening drinks. And he finds he can't stop. Drink, drink, drink... In secret, or openly and defiantly. He's possessed by a devil. In lucid moments he knows his family, his career, his very life is ruined; and a drink—he thinks one drink—is enough to drown the thought for a while. It isn't of course; it never is. Since he's sick, the very nature of the sickness means one drink is too many— and a thousand not enough. Well-meaning friends, parsons, priests—even doctors—bid him have courage, have strength, leave the bottle alone! They extract promises—and he gladly gives them: anything for peace, anything to make them go away—so that he can get at the bottle he's hidden somewhere.'

'But the promises?' Ramage asked.

'Oh yes, they're meant at the moment he makes them. That's what's so degrading because a moment later the fever drowns them. The man knows nothing can save him: he's doomed to drink and drink until he dies or kills himself.'

'Why don't more of them kill themselves?" Ramage asked brutally.

'Pride,' Bowen answered simply. 'Just the dregs of pride. No man wants to leave behind as his epitaph that he killed himself while blind drunk.'

A pencil on the desk rolled back and forth in time with the Triton's roll; glasses and decanters clinked in the racks; the bright light coming through the skylight made strange shadows dance from side to side across the cabin. And Ramage knew Bowen had given him some clues to the problem, but not enough to provide the answer. And in fifteen minutes he had to take over the watch on deck from Southwick.

'Well, Bowen, this imaginary man we are talking about is, of course, you; but I am not a well-meaning friend, a parson, priest or doctor. I'm commanding the Triton and responsible to God and the Admiralty for the lives of the sixty or more men in her and for every sliver of wood and ounce of iron of which she's made.

'In a week or so we'll be in me West Indies,' he continued.

'The Hannibal recently lost 200 men from yellow jack. In the Raisonable frigate, thirty-six of her crew—one man in three—went over the standing part of the foresheet on a voyage of 300 miles. Yellow jack, a couple of broadsides from a French frigate, a mast going by the board in a squall— this could happen to us, and you'd have thirty men to attend to. And you'd be drunk. One more drink would be too much to pull you round,' he said angrily, throwing Bowen's phrase back at him., 'and a thousand wouldn't be enough.'

Once more Bowen's hands were pressing his temples. The authoritative air of the man of medicine had vanished; he was staring at the deck, a crumpled, liquor-stained and liquor-sodden apology for what had once been a man.

And, facing him., Ramage felt a desperate helplessness. Did the man need sympathy? No—he had that from the 'well-meaning friends'. Harshness? Presumably he'd had that from his wife. Discipline? There'd be no one to enforce it Yet there'd been the clues. The drinks in the morning and the secrecy. Bowen admitted he thought that was when the illness started. The secrecy, the shame, and yet underlying it all Ramage sensed there would still be a remnant of pride.

But where to begin? Damn the man; he had enough to think about without doctoring a doctor. Well, what set a man off drinking to excess? In a social sense—let's start there. Two types of drinkers—those who get drunk during the course of an enjoyable evening; those who arrived at a reception already half-drunk. Why? Because they were too shy to arrive sober: they needed a drink or two to give them courage to meet strangers. Was that a due? Professional men—was the pattern the same?

'Bowen,' he said, 'give me an honest answer. Did you begin drinking heavily because you imagined you were losing some of your skill?'

Bowen nodded. 'A run of unsuccessful operations. Several patients died. Two were friends. I lost confidence; I needed a drink each time.'

'Think now; is that really how the drinking began? Because you lost confidence in yourself?'

The man refused to look up.

'Yes, that's how it began,' he said softly. 'To begin with, one drink was enough to restore the confidence. Then it needed two. Then three. But between each bout more of my confidence was gone—I think that was the trouble.'

'Right,' Ramage snapped. 'Now we know the cause: you lost your confidence. Why? Were you making mistakes?'

'I don't think so.'

'Don't think. You must know by now.'

'No, I wasn't making mistakes. I was trying too hard. I was expecting myself to perform miracles. I tried to cure people other doctors had given up.'

'So you know now you were deluding yourself; it wasn't that you'd lost your skill.'

'Yes,' the surgeon said miserably. 'I know now, today, but it's too late.'

'Oh no it's not!' Ramage exclaimed. 'For your sake, it'd better not be.'

But what to do now? Yes, the man still had some pride left. And common sense told Ramage that pride was the most important clue.

That was why he hated ordering the flogging—it gave a proud man an overpowering sense of disgrace and merely made a bad man worse. Pride made a good seaman—pride at being the first to reach a yard up the ratlines, at turning in a neater splice, making a better shirt than the purser sold.

'Bowen,' he said quietly, 'I believe that four years ago you were among the best of the doctors in London.'

The man nodded but still looked at the deck.

'For that reason I'm glad to have you as the surgeon in the Triton. My life might well depend on your skill, just as much as the life of any—and every—man in the ship's company. But we aren't in the Channel now, where constipation and rheumatics or "shamming Abraham" are all you have to prescribe for. We'll soon be in one of the unhealthiest spots in the world.

'This ship will arrive there with a greater advantage, medically speaking, than the present flagship: a fine surgeon.

'But before you are a damned bit of good to me and to the ship'—he spoke more sharply now—'we have to cure you. Or maybe you have to cure yourself. You're popular with the men; Southwick and I know your professional record. You've nothing to be ashamed of—providing you keep off the drink.'

'But I can't,' Bowen said with a shattering simplicity. 'It's no good me making any promises—I'd only break 'em. I promised my wife a thousand times, and since I've broken every promise to her, obviously I'd break one to you.'

Had Bowen unwittingly just prescribed his cure? Ramage said quickly:

'There'll be no promises, Bowen; simply an order. It may sound harsh, but remember this: I'm responsible for the well-being and efficiency of sixty men, apart from the safety of the ship and carrying out the orders I've received. If one man in this ship's company suffers through your drunkenness...' he left the threat unspoken.

'The order is this, Bowen: during the next four days you'll be rationed to a gill of rum a day, half at eleven o'clock, and half at supper-time. Southwick will issue it to you. For the four days after that you'll have half a gill, issued in the same way by Southwick. Then no more: not one drop.'

'Oh .-God,' Bowen groaned, 'you've no idea what you're doing...'

Perspiration soaked the man's clothes; it was dripping from his face. His hands trembled as they pressed against his temples; his eyes seemed glazed.

'I've no idea what private hell you'll be living in, I admit. But I know to what private hell you can send one of my seamen if you butcher him with an unnecessary or badly done amputation. Or kill him because you're too drunk to give him the right treatment for yellow jack or scurvy or whatever it happens to be.'

Bowen's whole body was shaking now and his eyes were focused on the cut-glass decanters in the rack behind Ramage.

'My orders will be given to Mr Southwick in a few minutes. There'll be a Marine sentry outside your door and you'll not leave your cabin without getting my permission. On the other hand you won't spend much time in your cabin: you're to stand watch with Mr Southwick. In other words, you'll only be in your cabin while I or Appleby are on watch.'

'Very well, sir.'

Bowen stood up and Ramage saw a cunning look in his eye.

'By the way,' Ramage added quietly, 'your cabin will be searched before you return to it. And my orders are that if you so much as sniff at the cork from a bottle of liquor, apart from your ration, you'll be placed under arrest; put in irons, if necessary.'

'But I'm the surgeon,' Bowen protested weakly. 'You can't put me in irons like a common seaman. I'll protest to the Admiral I'll demand that you be brought to trial... for oppression, for defiance of the Regulations, for------'

'I can have you put in irons, Bowen: one Marine can carry out that order, and the devil take any Regulations. As for protesting to the Admiral—well, you'll have been in irons for days before you get within a mile of the flagship. And even from a hundred yards away, you'll find it hard to deliver your protest if you're in irons. Now, get up on deck while someone clears the drink from your cabin!'

Bowen shambled out and Ramage, feeling like a man who'd been flogging a stray dog with a horse-whip, passed the word for Southwick, who came down with such alacrity he'd obviously been waiting anxiously to hear what had happened.

Nodding his head as Ramage related what had passed, he looked doubtful when he heard of the order, then nodded again when Ramage said the surgeon would be sharing his watch.

'Aye,' he said, 'it may work the cure. If it does, you'll have saved his life the same as fishing him out of the sea. It's the loneliness that'll be hard to bear. I think you've hit on it, sir: we've got to keep him occupied every moment he's awake. I've been told he's a great chess player.'

That remark seemed so irrelevant that Ramage snapped:

'That's a great help. Rum and checkmate in two moves.'

The Master grinned. 'No sir, I meant that perhaps a few games of chess would help. D'you play?'

'Badly. I just about know the moves.'

'I'm not much good either; but maybe it'd do his self-respect a bit o' good to beat the pair of us, because his self-respect's all he's got to save him.'

'Is there a set of chessmen on board?'

'Yes—I've a nice set I bought in the Levant years ago. Used to play a lot in my last ship—sorry, not the Kathleen, the one before that.'

'Very well, Mr Southwick. By the way, see that Bowen eats regular meals, even if they choke him. And we'll make it part of the treatment—or punishment—that he has to play a couple of games of chess with you every forenoon, and with me every evening. It may bore him; but who knows, it may make us chess champions of the Caribbean!'

Late in the afternoon four days later Southwick came up to Ramage on the quarterdeck and, indicating the men at the wheel within earshot, said, 'I'd like to have a word with you, sir.'

The Master looked worried: his usual cheerful face was— well, Ramage couldn't be sure. Not angry, not depressed— puzzled, perhaps. The two men walked aft to the taffrail and Ramage raised his eyebrows.

'It's Bowen, sir.'

'It's always Bowen,' Ramage said irritably, 'but I thought he was looking a lot better this morning.'

Southwick brightened up. 'That's just it, sir! He didn't come to me for his tot this morning, nor at four o'clock. I've just luffed up to leeward of him and his breath doesn't smell of drink. I think,' he said with something approaching awe in his voice, and pronouncing each word carefully in case Ramage missed the significance, 'I think he hasn't had a drink all day.'

Ramage stared at him; Southwick stared back. Both men seemed to be looking at some sea monster or ghost; at something they could hardly let themselves believe.

For a few moments Ramage wondered if this was the end of a nightmare which had begun three days ago. The day after his order to the surgeon, he, Southwick and the Marine sentry had ended up wrestling with a violent and screaming Bowen: a man temporarily insane. Even as they held him pinned to the deck in the wardroom he'd been screaming things which made Ramage's blood run cold: a telescope in a rack over the doorway to Southwick's cabin had become, in Bowen's frenzied mind, a Barbary pirate's sword which was whirling and twisting in the air without a hand to guide it but intent on disembowelling him. Then the moon-faced Marine had become a roaring lion and the wardroom a jungle in which Bowen was lost and about to be savaged. The deckhead and beams above had then suddenly become the upper part of a giant press that was slowly descending to crush him. The Marine's red jacket became tongues of flame setting the ship on fire. And so it had gone on.

By the time they managed to calm the man down they were all shaking, not only from the effort of holding him but because they were completely unnerved: Bowen's fears had been real enough to his tortured mind and his screams and frenzied yells of warning gave a terrible reality to his delusions. His shouts as the pirate's sword swooped and twisted, missing him each time by only an inch or so, almost made it visible in their own imaginations as well as his. As they glanced up at the deckhead on which Bowen's eyes had been focused, wide and staring, his hands fighting to get free to try to push it back up and prevent the press crushing him, to Ramage at least it seemed for a moment the deckhead was actually moving down.

That night two Marines had guarded Bowen in his cabin and for his own sake Ramage had him secured in a hurriedly-made strait-jacket. Next morning the delusions had gone and he remembered Southwick was to issue his drink and the Marines had to restrain him until the proper time.

After he'd had the drink he'd been all right for most of the afternoon, only becoming wild an hour before his evening tot was due. Later Southwick had made him march up and down the quarterdeck for the first part of the night and Ramage had kept him up for most of the rest, until the man was so physically exhausted he'd begged to be allowed to go down to his cabin to sleep.

Next morning he'd been ordered up on deck again and Southwick, with a dogged relentlessness, had made him talk.

Finally he'd brought the subject round to chess and, after provoking an argument about it, had made a contemptuous challenge that he'd beat Bowen at a game even giving him an advantage of a rook and a bishop.

That had made Bowen so angry he'd accepted the challenge —but only on condition Southwick gave him no advantage. At the change of watch both men had gone down to the wardroom for a meal without Bowen remembering his tot was due.

As Southwick related it to Ramage afterwards, the game had been vicious: the Master had found himself in difficulty within five moves. Faced with a disastrous defeat inside ten minutes, instead of the game lasting the intended hour or so, Southwick had used a trifling excuse to get up from the table, knocking over the chessmen as he did so. Bowen had been unruffled, started a new game, and within ten minutes Southwick was again facing checkmate.

Arguments, moves and counter-moves, mate and checkmates; games lost by Southwick with Bowen playing a rook and bishop short; successive games lost with Bowen not having a queen on the board either, had taken them up to supper-time. Then Bowen had demanded both his noon and evening tots together but received without argument only one.

That night Ramage sensed the chess victories had done something to Bowen and later heard him good-naturedly baiting Southwick, offering to play him with the Master using bishops as extra queens.

And now here Southwick was reporting—on a day when a succession of squalls had kept the watch on deck so busy furling and setting sail that there had been no time for chess— that not only had Bowen failed to demand his tots but apparently was not broaching a secret supply either__ 'I'd be glad of your company at supper, Mr Southwick, and Bowen, too. Perhaps you'd pass the invitation to him Put your chess set in my cabin, and warn Appleby he might be relieved late tonight.'

Southwick grinned and walked forward to find Bowen, leaving a puzzled Ramage pacing the deck. It was too quick for a cure; but instinctively he felt that at least Bowen was getting the right treatment.

That night, as the steward Douglas took away the plates and removed the cloth he did not, as he would have otherwise done, put down fresh glasses and a decanter. Instead, Ramage glanced up at Bowen and said innocently, 'I hear you have been giving Southwick a thrashing at chess.'

Bowen laughed and looked slightly embarrassed.

'Southwick hasn't had the practice I have.'

'Is it simply practice?'

The surgeon was obviously 'torn between honesty and a wish to avoid hurting Southwick's feelings.

'Mostly, sir. There are certain basic situations you learn about and try to avoid—or create.'

'Trouble is, I haven't a good memory,' Southwick growled.

'Memory hasn't a lot to do with it, unless you want to use some of the stylized opening gambits. That makes for a dull game anyway.'

Ramage was interested now, having always complacently blamed his poor play on a notoriously bad memory.

'Come, Bowen! Surely a good memory is important.'

'No, sir,' the surgeon protested, 'That's a commonly held view but a wrong one, I'm afraid. I'd say the two most important factors are an eye to spot a trap, and the will to keep attacking.'

Southwick eyed Ramage. "You should be a champion, sir.'

'Yes,' Bowen said eagerly before an embarrassed Ramage could interrupt. 'From what I've heard you should be a first-class player and I'm surprised you're not.'

'There's not much 'time to play chess at sea...'

'No,' the surgeon admitted, 'but------'

'Yes, we've got time for a couple of games now. But I warn you, I'm hopeless. Southwick, you can act as a frigate—keep a weather eye open for enemy traps. You agree, Bowen?'

'Certainly, but I'm sure it won't be necessary.'

'I haven't played for a couple of years: I can barely remember the moves.'

Douglas, previously primed, moved forward with the chess board and an inlaid box containing the chessmen. Bowen opened the box, took out two pieces, juggled them in his hands beneath the table, then held them both up for Ramage to choose.

It was white, and they set up the board. Ramage remembered vaguely that advancing a king pawn two places was regarded as a good safe opening move and made it. After that, it was like trying to repel dozens of boarders single-handed in thick smoke. Despite Southwick watching every move, pointing out possible threats, Bowen's bishops, knights and rooks were everywhere and apparently doubled in numbers. Three of Ramage's pawns, a bishop, then a rook were dropped in the box as they were taken. A knight and the other bishop followed; Bowen had lifted the queen off the board and dropped it in the box and it was only when he moved his knight into her place that Ramage saw what had happened. Bowen had merely said 'Check' and, as Ramage went to move the king out of danger, added politely, 'I really do think it's checkmate, sir.'

'And it is, by God!' exclaimed Southwick. 'Well I...'

'Me too,' Ramage said ruefully. 'I'm glad we didn't have a guinea on that game.'

'I prefer not to play cards or chess for money, sir,' Bowen said. 'Makes for bad feeling if someone gets excited and turns what's supposed to be a game into something approaching a duel, with cash if not honour at stake. It doesn't improve the game, either.'

'Quite right,' Southwick rumbled. 'Quite right—hate to see it myself. What about another game—and you leave the queen and both bishops in the box.

Bowen hesitated and looked up at Ramage, who guessed he was thinking it was perhaps unwise to beat his captain too often.

'And a knight and a rook too!'

'I'm sure that won't be necessary,' the surgeon said, reassured. 'After all, I've been playing the game for...'

He broke off, embarrassed, but Southwick grinned, '... more years than the Captain's been born...'

'Well, yes, but I didn't------'

Ramage said, 'That gives me an excellent excuse for losing every game. Your first move, Bowen. Now, Southwick, keep a sharp lookout! If I ever become an admiral and command my own squadron, I'm getting more and more doubtful about letting you command a frigate!'

In nine moves Bowen looked up at Ramage, who said, ruefully, 'Don't bother to say it—checkmate!'

The third game lasted several more moves and Ramage was able to watch the surgeon. The hands still trembled but the eyes were clearer. The greyness of the skin had not quite gone but the face muscles had tightened up and the mouth did not hang open slackly. Clean -linen, stock neatly tied... And Bowen was alert; in fact a new man. It sounded a cliche but Ramage could think of no other description. Alert, decisive, and completely in control of both himself and the situation. His eyes would move across the board three or four times, then his hand would reach out and without a moment's hesitation move a piece with thumb and index finger (all too often lifting off one of Ramage's pieces with the ring and little finger at the same time) and he'd wait without fidgeting while Ramage tried to think up a counter-move, often aided by Southwick. When the game ended, Bowen, at Ramage's request, explained some of their worst mistakes. They seemed obvious enough—afterwards.

Finally the Master said: 'I'd better go and relieve the master's mate—he's had his watch stretched out. If you'll excuse me...'

Ramage nodded, but the surgeon made no move to leave.

Instead he put the chessmen back in the box and folded the board. For a moment Ramage wondered if he should make some remark, but Bowen, looking at the table top, said:

'This is the first day for more than three years...'

Ramage still said nothing, deciding it was best for Bowen to unburden himself if he wished, or keep silent.

'... I've wanted it,' God knows—but perhaps God has also given me the strength not to go to Southwick's cabin and beg...'

It took Ramage several moments to realize the significance of that single word 'beg'. Bowen had at last fully recovered his pride: to him, getting a drink now meant 'begging' one from the Master, whom he'd roundly beaten at chess and who----- '... Not just God, though... I think the last few days must have been just as bad for you and Southwick as for me...'

He was silent for a minute or two and Ramage said:

'Perhaps not in the way you are thinking We were only afraid we'd fail.'

'You mean that I would fail,' Bowen corrected gently.

'No, I think the first three days were up to us. After that it was up to you,'

'I only pray I can keep it up. But I'm not going to make you any promises, sir, and I hope you won't ask for them.' Ramage shook his head.