Ramage's Mutiny by Dudley Pope

captain?”
    â€œSummers, sir, because Perry stood down.”
    â€œWhy did Perry stand down?”
    â€œBecause of Summers and that knife of his. He suddenly grabbed Perry and knocked him down and held a knife at ‘is throat and said he would kill him too, rather than let him command the ship.”
    â€œAnd Perry agreed?”
    â€œYes, sir, he didn’t ‘ave no choice, really, but they elected him mate. Summers captain and Perry mate, just like a merchant ship.”
    â€œWhat about the other people necessary to work the ship—were they elected too?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œHarris, the third prisoner there,” Edwards said, “what do you know of him?”
    â€œHe wasn’t a ringleader, not at first, sir. But after the mutiny he finished off some of them.”
    Edwards was so puzzled he could only repeat Weaver’s words: “Finished off some of them?”
    â€œThe wounded officers—the First and Third Lieutenants and the Lieutenant of Marines: they was still alive after the ship was taken.”
    â€œHow was Harris concerned in their murder?”
    â€œThe mutineers were voting on everything, and they were told to make a show of hands whether the living officers should be put to death or kept alive and handed over to the Dons, but Harris swore they should all die.”
    â€œHe simply made that statement?” Edwards demanded.
    â€œOh no, sir: he shouted that as he ran below, and he stabbed them where they was lying.”
    â€œWhat did the mutineers think of that, then?”
    â€œMost of them abused him when he came back to the quarterdeck and said what he had done, but that was all.”
    Ramage leaned forward to catch the president’s eye and received a nod of approval.
    â€œWere you the only man who did not take part in the mutiny?”
    â€œNo, sir, there was forty or fifty of us.”
    â€œWhat happened to you?”
    â€œWe was given all the unpleasant work until we got to La Guaira. Swabbing the blood off the decks, and things like that, sir.”
    â€œSo there were about 125 mutineers?”
    â€œAbout that, sir. I think there was 182 in the ship’s company.”
    â€œSo the prisoner Summers was elected leader by more than 125 mutineers, and Perry the second-in-command, that is correct?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œAnd Harris—what did he do?”
    â€œWell, sir, he was always in liquor, and not many of the mutineers would have anything to do with him after he killed the wounded. He used to stay close to Summers and run errands for him: fetch him a mug of rum or a chaw of tobacco,” Weaver said contemptuously. “He was trying to make up for being a Johnnie-come-lately, that’s what the rest of us reckoned.”
    Ramage made a mental note that Weaver’s evidence had so far condemned the other three prisoners for conspiracy, concealing mutinous designs, mutiny and murder. It remained to cover running away with the ship, deserting and “holding intelligence with the enemy.” Yet every question that was asked merely underlined the other question that none of them would ever ask out loud: what private hell had Wallis established on board the
Jocasta
that made more than five score seamen rise against him? Ramage was certain the mutiny had been directed entirely at Wallis: the murder of the officers had been incidental. Indeed, the fact that most of the mutineers later wanted to keep alive the wounded survivors bore that out.
    More than twenty seamen had been put in irons ready for a flogging next day for—at best—some frivolous charge contrived by Wallis. Part of the mutiny had been to free those men. Part? It was probably the whole reason, but releasing the men meant disposing of the officers and the Captain. Would the men have spared Wallis and the officers if they could have freed the prisoners without bloodshed? Idle speculation: no one would ever know