It was sudden and it was unexpected at the inn, and the shape of the piazza meant the walls acted like a concert hall, giving more body to the reedy notes. The French officers were drunk enough to leap to their feet to cheer the three shadowy figures shambling towards them across the piazza, joining in the words of the most famous of the Revolutionary songs. Martin had not in fact heard it until that afternoon and had been practising, with a few other tunes, under Paolo's watchful eye and ear until the cutter had been ready to leave the Calypso.

Ramage stopped five yards from the tables and turned round to conduct Martin's playing with all the flourishes of a maestro commanding a huge orchestra. Paolo stood at what a gipsy boy would regard as attention and saluted. The absurd sight of the motley trio made the officers sing even louder, a few of them redoubling their shouts of wine for the tziganes and, as Martin rounded off the last notes, calling out the names of more tunes they wanted to hear.

Ramage turned back to the tables, swept his hand down and outwards in an exaggerated bow, and noted that the arrival of a gipsy flautist was a welcome interlude for the officers and, judging from the way he was hurrying his waiters, no less welcome to the innkeeper. Every glass of wine he could get poured down a French throat meant good money poured into his own pocket.

Ramage turned back to point at Martin, an offhand gesture that a conceited maestro would make to a nervous soloist, but also one that a flamboyant gipsy father would use to draw the attention of a half-witted son. Obediently Martin began to play a sentimental, languorous Italian tune, one from Naples, which Paolo and Ramage had decided would bring just the right amount of nostalgia to the officers. Then there came a lively tarantella, which quickly had the officers banging their hands on the table tops in time with the rhythm and demanding an encore.

By the time Martin finished that and two more tunes, the French officers were shouting for the tziganes to come and drink, and Ramage and Paolo adopted a pose of nervous shyness so that the officers shouted even louder and the innkeeper, worried at losing trade if the zingari went to the tavern round the corner, overlooking the lagoon formed by the causeways, hurried across the cobbles to lead Ramage in by the arm, thanking him in Italian and congratulating him on the playing.

Ramage paused for a moment, indicating that he wanted to whisper something to the innkeeper, and when the man stopped Ramage mumbled: "The boy - a cretin, you understand. The flute is all he knows. He cannot even talk - except with his flute."

"Mama mia" exclaimed the innkeeper, who had a normal Italian's love of music, "he may not be able to talk, but he makes that flute sing.'"

"Any scraps from the kitchen," Ramage murmured as he let himself be led to the tables, "would be very welcome; we are very hungry and have walked a long way today."

"Of course, of course." The innkeeper saw one of the officers beckoning and pointing at Ramage. "Quick, the colonel wants us. Your name?"

"My name?" Ramage repeated stupidly. "Why, we all have the same name!"

"I know, 1 know! But what is it?"

"Buffarelli. From Saturnia."

"I thought as much," the innkeeper growled, pushing Ramage forward towards the portly colonel sitting at the table, his chubby face streaming with perspiration reflecting in the lantern. "I can smell the sulphur."

The innkeeper has a vivid imagination, Ramage thought. Saturnia, several miles inland and halfway to Monte Amiata, was now just a small village beside a great stone wall, built round the hot sulphur springs which had made it a favourite spot for the Romans, who celebrated the feast of Saturnalia there. A swim in the hot springs, with the water so thick that it was impossible to sink, left you reeking of sulphur for days. Obviously the word Saturnalia came from the place, or was the place named after the rites? Ramage was far from sure.

"Sulphur!" he said petulantly, then repeated it several times with a whimper in his voice as he followed the innkeeper among the tables. The innkeeper glanced over his shoulder and Ramage seized the opportunity of almost shouting, "Sulphur, eh? I'll give you sulphur! Just because we are zingari you insult us, but be careful, we are Buffarelli, too!"

Ramage managed to time it so that his outburst ended just as they arrived at the colonel's table, leaving the innkeeper at a disadvantage and needing to translate an explanation to the colonel. This allowed Ramage to be sulky, so that both the colonel and the innkeeper would have to try to make amends if they wanted any more music. Ramage hoped it would lead the colonel to invite this wild-looking gipsy to sit down at his table, if only to emphasize that the last two of the three words of the Republic's slogan really were Fraternité and Egalité.

In contrast to Ramage, who was trying to look both furtive and indignant, the innkeeper was ingratiating. He spoke good French and interspersed almost every word with "mon colonel" while he explained that the tziganes had just arrived in Orbetello from Saturnia, a village many miles inland, and that the unfortunate flûtiste, who was dumb and not quite possessed of all his senses, had been practising French patriotic tunes for many days in the hope that he would be allowed to play them to the officers of the 156th Artillery Regiment as a farewell to Italy and a token of Tuscany's best wishes for their long voyage.

The colonel nodded, as though accepting on behalf of the regiment, if not the commanding general, these routine greetings.

"The flûtiste is this man's son?"

The innkeeper looked questioningly at Ramage, who just managed to avoid answering in French and said instead: "I do not understand?"

When the innkeeper translated, Ramage shook his head. "Brother. The other one is my son. Everybody is dead," he added vaguely. "I feed them both. Very hungry we are, too; it has been a long walk."

The innkeeper understood his customer better than Ramage, and in translating Ramage's explanation into French made it such a heartrending story that the colonel first began to sit upright, instead of lolling back in the chair, then topped his glass from a carafe, and then held up a hand to silence the innkeeper.

"A meal!" he said in a voice which would have carried well down the aisle of a great cathedral. "For the three of them. Here, at my table - I have never before spoken to Italian tziganes. But until the meal is ready, the flûtiste shall give us his music - music to pay for their supper, eh?"

Several officers applauded their colonel as the innkeeper gave Ramage a rapid translation before disappearing in the direction of the kitchen. Ramage gave a brief whistle to Paolo, indicating Martin as well, and the midshipman gave the line a tug and the two of them came over to the colonel's table. Ramage went through the ritual of introducing them and, although the Frenchman obviously did not understand a word of Italian, he smiled benevolently at Paolo's carefully ill-contrived salute and at Martin's vacant grin as he placed his flute on his shoulder as though it was a musket.

The other officers clapped and one of them cleared a nearby table, with a sweep of his arm that sent the bottles and glasses crashing to the ground, then indicated that Martin should stand up on the table and play. The young lieutenant gave an idiotic grin and climbed up, immediately beginning a popular French tune that Paolo had taught him.

In the meantime a waiter set down more glasses and a bottle in front of the colonel, who indicated that he should fill all three. The colonel then snapped his fingers at Ramage and pointed to two of the glasses. Ramage picked up one with carefully assumed nervousness and sipped, and then signalled to Paolo, and clumsily raised his glass to the colonel.

He wanted to avoid having to sit alone with the colonel. If he did there would be no conversation, because the colonel assumed he spoke no French. He dared not admit otherwise because a gipsy in Orbetello speaking French would arouse suspicions. He wanted a couple of other officers to come to the table; then they would gossip with the colonel and, with luck, reveal scraps of information.

"The colonel enjoys the music," a voice said in French-accented Italian, and Ramage looked round to find a young officer standing there, smiling - at the colonel, rather than Ramage, and explaining to the colonel in French what he had just said. He was obviously the colonel's aide, and he listened as the colonel explained that the tziganes had learned French tunes and come in from the hills to play a farewell.

"Farewell, sir?" the young captain asked sharply. "How did they know we were going anywhere?"

"Ask him," the colonel said, obviously too tipsy to care very much.

"You have come to say goodbye to us," the young captain said to Ramage amiably. "We appreciate it."

"Goodbye?" Ramage repeated, trying to look owlish. "But we have come to say hello. We practise the French tunes. They tell us there are French officers in Orbetello, so we come here - a long way," he added plaintively. "Too far to come to say goodbye. Why? Are you going home?"

"Not home," the captain said with a relieved grin, and turned to the colonel.

"They had no idea we were going anywhere, sir," he said. "I expect that innkeeper added to the story to get them a bigger tip - you know how these Italians work together. They learned the French tunes to come to play - I have the impression that they think we're stationed here, so they can play to us for a few weeks."

"We might wish we had them to cheer us up, considering where we are going," the colonel said bitterly. "Still, no need for alarm, eh? You're always seeing spies under the bed, Jean-Paul. Sit down and have a drink. Where's the major?"

His voice was becoming querulous and obviously his aide recognized the symptoms. He called to a thin-faced officer sitting at the far side of the bar, a sad-looking man with inordinately long moustaches that hung down from his upper lip like curtains pulled away from a window. He picked up his shako and, with obvious reluctance, made his way over to the colonel's table. "You wanted me, sir?"

"Sit down," the colonel said in what obviously passed for his friendly manner. "Pour yourself a drink. This local wine is good. From Argentario, over there. Not really white and certainly not red. Deep gold . . ." He held up the glass against the light of a candle in a lantern. "Just look at it. They say it turns to vinegar if you move it. Pity, I'd like to take a few casks with us. That Cretan wine - mon Dieu, they use resin to flavour it. They'll try to persuade us to buy some casks when we get to Candia, but where we're going to it is hot enough without having to soak up resin."

Ramage waited anxiously: one grunted word from the major would reveal the precise destination. But the major said nothing: he reached for the carafe, saw there was no glass and took the one that Ramage had just set down on the table.

The colonel noticed immediately. "That is the glass of the tzigane," he snapped. "Get another one for yourself."

The major put the glass down, glowered at Ramage and walked to the next table, taking the glass from a young lieutenant, swilling the wine round and then emptying it on the floor, and returning to the table to refill it.

"We leave for Porto Ercole in the morning two hours later than arranged," the colonel said suddenly, his voice slurred.

"But sir, all the movement orders are ..."

The colonel glowered at the major, his podgy face growing even redder, as though he was holding his breath. "I ride at the head of the regiment, and I shall not be ready in time," he announced. "I intend to listen to this flûtiste for at least another hour, and by that time I shall be drunk and sad, and when I go to bed drunk and sad," he said with the honesty of someone already drunk, "I wake up next morning with a bad liver, a bad head and a bad temper. With me in that state you expect me to sit on a damnable horse and be shaken up violently for an hour while we drag those thrice-damned guns over cart tracks to Porto Ercole. And then - then," he half-shouted, the thought of it clearly making him lose his temper, "we have to get the guns and the horses on board those ships! Have you ever seen the way the navy goes about its business?"

He glared at the major and clearly expected an answer.

"Well, sir, not really, but -"

"Heh, then you have a treat in store. Slings under the bellies of the horses, and the first ones hoisted make such a squealing that the rest of them try to bolt. Guns the same. They try to lift them off the carriages and forget to undo the cap squares so that, instead of the gun being lifted, the whole damned carriage goes up like a rocket, and the sailors panic and drop it again, smashing the carriage, killing a couple of people, and making more horses bolt, probably with men on their backs. Oh, major, embarking a battery of field guns, with men and horses, is an experience. When you add to it our destination," he added balefully, "you realize why I wish those fools in Paris had never heard of me or my battery. I tell you," he snarled, his voice dropping, "if you think trying to shift those guns across the sands of that causeway to Porto Ercole is hard work, then you can think again: that sand is only a few inches thick, spread on rock. Where we are going, my man, the sand just goes down and down, bottomless like the ocean. When the wheels of a gun carriage sink into it, your heart sinks with them . . ."

The rest of the sentence was drowned by the officers clapping as Martin finished a tune and Ramage turned, gave a dramatic wave and pointed upwards, signalling to the young lieutenant to go on playing. He just had time to hear the colonel continuing.

". . . so you talk too much, major, and I can't hear the music. Sand! In your mouth, in your food, in your wine, in your boots, in your eyes... It makes the axles of the gun carriages run hot, blocks the barrels of muskets and the touchholes, even gets into the scabbard of your sword so that you can't draw in a hurry .. . And you want me to hurry towards it! No major, I just want you to be silent now so that I can hear the music!"

With that the colonel's head slowly drooped forward and he began to snore as the outraged major, so far unable to say a word in his own defence, drained his glass and filled it again with a savage movement that slopped wine across the table.

Ramage saw the innkeeper and two waiters coming out of the kitchen with a large plate heaped with steaming spaghetti. "Food for the tziganes!" he shouted as he zigzagged between the tables.

Martin had just come to the end of another tune and two of the cheering officers repeated the innkeeper's words in a drunken chorus, pulling at Martin's arm to attract his attention. The lieutenant, grasping his flute, looked down at them, not understanding what they were shouting and feeling the table beginning to rock as they pulled him. A moment later he toppled over as a leg of the table gave way and in falling he grabbed one of the officers in a futile attempt to keep his balance. He and the other man hit the floor together, there was a metallic thud, and Ramage just caught sight of a shiny object sliding across the floor and coming to rest almost at the major's feet.

The major bent down and picked it up. It was a pistol, the brass polished and the wood newly oiled. He examined it curiously, noting that it was loaded. Suddenly he cocked it and pointed it at Ramage as he stood up.

"Who are you?" he demanded in French. "This is a British pistol!"

Orbetello's jail was next to the town hall, on the other side from the inn, and was simply a large room at one end of the cellar. Because the town was built out on the peninsula the defensive walls were on the water's edge. Indeed, Ramage thought, it was too much like Venice to be comfortable; the foundations of most of the town were below the water level so that the walls of the cellar were sodden with damp. The cellars of most of the houses must have a foot or two of water in them and the cell was either pumped out regularly or the floor had been raised.

The major was a remarkably patient man, even though he was almost cross-eyed from weariness. He had Ramage, Martin and Orsini tied securely to three chairs placed side by side in front of him with two sentries behind them. He had a chair and table brought down and he sat there, a lantern on the table so turned that the light from its window lit the three prisoners, leaving him in shadow.

With only a rudimentary knowledge of English, the major was trying to interrogate Martin and Orsini. He had established that Ramage spoke a little Italian. Ramage had had to admit to that, having been heard speaking to the innkeeper. The other two had been quick enough to insist that they spoke only English - a statement of fact in the case of Martin. Ramage was thankful that the major either disliked the colonel's aide or did not know he spoke Italian.

The major had also been so absorbed with Martin's Sea Service pistol, with its belt hook and the word "Tower" and a crown engraved on the lock, that it never occurred to him that Martin might have more weapons hidden under his layers of shirts. Other officers had seized Ramage and Orsini and quickly searched them but found no weapons. Obviously Martin was the only man carrying a pistol, and they had not noticed the canvas belt round his chest even when they stuck the flute down the front of his clothing, a chivalrous gesture which none of the British had expected.

Ramage felt a curious sympathy for the major: his colonel had eventually slid to the floor, dislodged in the struggle and blissfully unconscious from too much wine. The battery was due to move off to Porto Ercole next morning - this morning, Ramage corrected himself; it was now well past midnight - and suddenly he had discovered three British spies in his midst. Spies who came from nowhere, apparently, because they had not been recognized as naval officers. His commanding officer was beyond reach, thanks to the wine, and he did not know how much of the colonel's diatribe the Englishman had heard and understood.

Indeed, as he questioned the three men, the major tried to remember exactly what the colonel had said. The old man had insisted that the battery's departure be delayed by two hours, to allow him to get sober. Then he had gone on about the sandy track to Porto Ercole. Then he had grumbled about sand getting into everything - but had he mentioned the name of their final destination? The major finally decided that the colonel had not; the diatribe was against sand and its problems; there had been no reason to mention the country's name.

If he had mentioned the name, would this damned Englishman have understood? He admitted to speaking some Italian (with an atrocious accent), but apparently no French. The major had tried to trap him, suddenly giving orders or asking questions in French, but there had been no indication that the man understood. So the colonel was unlikely to have given away any secrets, although the major had no idea what had been said before the colonel called him to the table, except that the colonel's aide, a fop if there ever was one, had sworn that nothing had been said, apart from the innkeeper's remarks about the so-called tziganes coming down from the hills to play for the French soldiers.

It was cunningly contrived, the major admitted. A flûtiste pretending to be a gipsy and acting like a halfwit, his brother, and his nephew leading him on a piece of string . . . And they were only caught by a plate of spaghetti: the major felt himself grow cold at the thought of what might have happened had not the two drunken ensigns from "B" battery tugged the flûtiste so that he toppled from the table and dislodged the pistol.

In fact it did not matter what the British had heard and understood, because they could not now pass any information on to anyone else: they were locked in here, and in a few hours they would be slung in the baggage train, securely bound and heavily guarded, and taken on board the frigates. There the colonel could bring them to trial as spies, and then they could be shot, or hanged, if the navy preferred.

The major sighed with relief. He should have thought of that earlier: the three men could have all the secrets in the world and it would not matter because they could not pass them on to their own people. Quite a problem for a spy, he realized: information was only of use, of value if one was spying for money, when it was passed to a person or country that could take advantage of it.

But what were British spies doing here in Orbetello? By adopting the disguise of tziganes they could, of course, travel easily; no one expected tziganes to have travel documents - indeed, you locked up the house and the poultry when you saw them, but that was all. Tziganes with the flûtiste - that was clever; diabolically clever. Yet. . . perhaps it was just a coincidence. Who sent them? Had they come up from Naples? Were they just looking round for what scraps they could discover about the French in Italy, or were they seeking specific information - like the great operation planned for this autumn? No one could have any inkling of that - no Englishman, anyway - because the operation existed only on paper at the moment; he doubted whether any ships at all had begun to arrive in Crete. The frigates now in Porto Ercole and the two vessels supposed to join them (what were they called - bomb ketches?) were probably the first to start moving eastwards towards the assembly point, or whatever the navy called it.

The senior of these Englishmen was obviously the eldest, the fellow with the black hair and penetrating eyes and slightly hooked nose. He looked like an aristo and now that he was not acting as a gipsy he had the bearing of one. He could not hide it. With those high cheekbones, too, he was a handsome fellow; the women would have fallen for him if he had been going to live past tomorrow, or the next day. He imagined a navy hangman's noose round the fellow's neck, taking the whole weight of the body. Not as spectacular as a guillotine because you did not get that satisfying hiss and thud of the heavy blade running down the slide and lopping off the head, with the explosive spurt of blood and the thump of the head falling into the basket. Still, hanging from the yardarm was probably slower . . .

"You - where you come from?"

"England."

"Oui, I know, but now, before . . . before you here?" The damned man just shrugged his shoulders and repeated what he had answered twenty times before. "From the hills."

"You are spy."

"I am not." He said it very firmly. "What is there to spy on?"

"Troops, the defences of Italy, the ships in the ports ..."

"So, now I know that French officers are living at an inn in Orbetello. There are some rowing boats with fishing nets in the lagoon. It looks as though there will be a good crop of grapes. Last year's wine should be good, too. To whom could I sell that intelligence, m'sieur?"

"You may find other information."

"What is there to discover? That the French have invaded Italy? That is old information - several years old. That they hold Corsica or Elba? All that is old. That there are French soldiers in Orbetello?" Ramage shrugged his shoulders as best he could with the ropes holding him tightly to the chair. "I think anyone sitting in London with a map of Italy could guess where French troops were stationed."

"Ships then."

Again the Englishman shrugged his shoulders. "There are only a certain number of ports, m'sieur. I can tell you there are French warships in Genoa, Leghorn, Civita Vecchia, Bastia and Ajaccio. You can tell me that there are British warships in Plymouth, Portsmouth, Dover, Sheerness and Harwich. You can also tell me there are British troops in those places. It is obvious. Ports have ships - and they have to be protected by garrisons. I can go on - Toulon, Barcelona, Cartagena, Cadiz, Ferrol, Rochefort, Brest ... all contain French warships and troops. I haven't been to any of them - but it is obvious."

The devil of it is, the major thought, the thrice-damned Englishman is right. Spies were bound to be trying to find out information for their masters, and what information could they find along this coast that would be of the slightest interest to the English? Obviously there were garrisons at various towns and, as the Englishman had pointed out, any fool with a map would know where they would be. Any port of a decent size would hold warships. So ...

Nevertheless, here were three spies. What the devil could he do with them? There was no point in getting the two sentries to knock them about - these men were not clods; any information they had would be extracted only by trapping them with words.

He took out his watch. In five hours the regiment was due to move to Porto Ercole. By then the colonel would probably still be in a drunken stupor, but it was no good starting two hours late because, faced with the wrath of a senior officer for arriving late, the colonel would have no scruple in denying he had given the order the previous night. To be fair, the old fellow often said things when he was drunk that he did not remember next morning when he was what passed for sober. Most of the time this was just as well.

Obviously there was nothing more that needed to be done at once: the spies had been caught, and they could be taken out to the frigates, interrogated again, then tried and executed. In the meantime he could get some sleep and this jail could hold the three men until they were transferred to the baggage train. They could spend the rest of the night in those chairs, securely tied up - there was no point in risking them escaping. He gave orders to the guards and said to Ramage: "I leave you for the night. Do not try to escape - the guards have orders to shoot. Later we find out what you are doing."

The guards changed hourly and noisily, each couple bringing a new candle with them so that they could change the one in the lantern. Ramage talked to Martin and Orsini, after making as sure as he could that neither guard spoke English. There was little to talk about and neither youngster seemed very worried because, Ramage realized just as he was feeling sick with despair, they endowed him with magic powers which would ensure their escape.

What a brief and inglorious sally into enemy territory it had all been! He had left his ship and her two prizes; he had landed on French-occupied soil for what had seemed at the time the best of reasons - to find out the destination of a possible French army and fleet; he had been captured within three or four hours; he and two of his officers were to be executed within a few hours more.

The Admiralty ... the devil take Their Lordships. Gianna was about to lose the man she loved, and the nephew who was her heir. Of course she could fall in love again, and would, too, and produce her own heir. He shrugged his shoulders, feeling slightly silly at making such an obvious gesture while lashed to a chair in Orbetello's jail, and told himself that as far as the kingdom of Volterra was concerned, all that had happened was that the clock had stopped for a while. And for Britain? That was more serious. Their Lordships, and therefore the British government, would have no warning that the French were not only planning a new attack by land, but were busy assembling an army and a fleet, and that the target for the new attack was in the eastern Mediterranean. Ramage realized that it would be many weeks after the attack had been made that the British would learn about it, because they had effectively evacuated their ships from the Mediterranean.

Egypt or the Levant - that was where the attack was to be made. He was sure of that because of the drunken colonel's diatribe against sand. It could be another attack on Egypt, to make up for Bonaparte's defeat at the hands of Nelson and General Abercromby, or it could be an attack in the Acre area, for example, because it was the British defence of Acre that prevented Bonaparte's move northward. In either case, Egypt or the Levant, the French were using Crete as a base, and that plus the impending attack was all that the Admiralty needed to know.

Ironically, he had found the probable answers, Egypt or the Levant, within a very short time - but as the French major must have realized, information is useless to a spy if he cannot pass it on to those who can use it. Nevertheless, he had been criminally stupid in bringing Paolo along; Rossi would have been just as useful . . . and it was doubtful if he had really needed Martin.

He should have no sympathy for Rossi and Jackson, but he was grateful for their misguided attempt to help and worried about them. It seemed inevitable that they too should be captured. Well, Aitken had his orders, so he knew what to do if the Captain had not returned by midnight. He would be in command of quite a little squadron, and he would behave in the same way and have the same responsibilities as if Ramage had died on board from wounds or illness. The Royal Navy was organized on the axiom that no man was indispensable . . .

Someone hammered on the door and a moment later a key turned from the outside. As it was flung open, Ramage saw several soldiers waiting in the passage. One of them said to the guards: "Take the prisoners out: we are about to march."

"Are we to shoot them here in the square?" a guard asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

"No, the navy will do that in Porto Ercole, so the sergeant says. They are to go ahead of the baggage train." As he spoke, Ramage could hear the clippety-clop of a horse's hooves and the heavy rumble of wheels rolling over cobbles as a cart approached the town hall.

"Do we keep them tied up?" the guard asked.

"Leave them as they are; we'll load them on to the cart secured to the chairs. We don't have time to waste undoing these ropes and then tying them up again, and the mayor won't mind us taking three of his chairs."

The other guards sniggered and the rest of the soldiers crowded into the room. Ramage felt himself tilting backwards as three men picked up the chair to which he was bound and carried him out through the door. They hurried along the corridor, up the short flight of steps and along to the front door of the town hall, cursing as they banged elbows on the walls in the near-darkness and barked shins on the legs of the chair. Finally they had the chair tilted back so that Ramage was lying almost horizontally and was able to see another group of men behind carrying Martin and his chair, while more sturdy curses in English from beyond showed that Paolo had not been left behind. Ramage hoped that the French soldiers would not suddenly drop Paolo's chair, or bump him so painfully that he let fly a broadside of French or Italian oaths . . .

Outside, a chilly greyness over the far end of the square showed that dawn was approaching. Two unshaven soldiers with battered and sooty lanterns lit up a baggage wagon; about eighteen feet long with four wheels, the front pair smaller than the rear, it had a single horse pulling it, a wretched-looking animal whose ribs showed up as black stripes of shadow, its back a steep valley between neck and rump. A canvas hood protected the wagon from rain, a grotesque and tattered bonnet in the dim lantern light.

The wagon was stowed with crates and kitbags but a space the width of the wagon and about three feet long had been left at the rear end. The soldiers heaved the chair up and another man waiting inside helped them tilt it over the tailboard. A moment later Ramage found himself sitting upright in the back while more soldiers lifted Martin's chair. Finally, when the three chairs were in the wagon, the waiting soldier checked the ropes binding them and then climbed up on top of the casks and kitbags so that he could watch his prisoners. A lantern was handed up to him and, at a shout from the sergeant, the driver cracked his whip and the horse lurched forward, its harness rattling.

Ramage then saw men on horseback riding into the piazza, their plumed shakos showing that they were officers obviously waiting for the colonel and the major to appear so that they could start off for Porto Ercole. Where were the men and guns? Ramage guessed they must be camped along the via Aurelia and were yet to have their first taste of the sand on the causeway.

By the time the wagon reached the via Aurelia and turned right along it, Ramage could distinguish the features of the guard and Martin and Paolo.

"It's cold," the boy said, "but at least the mosquitoes haven't woken up."

"Yet," Martin said, "and we're still alive. I've even got my flute, but the damned thing has slipped down so the ropes are trying to shove it through my ribs."

"Is everything else all right under your shirt?" Ramage recalled the sailmaker making the waistcoat with the vertical pockets, and cursed himself for not insisting on flaps being added which could be buttoned down.

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry about. . ."

"It wasn't your fault. Never trust inn tables."

A sudden noise like a bull being strangled startled them, and a few moments later a peasant jogged past on his braying donkey, sitting astride the animal with his feet nearly touching the ground. The trees recently planted at even spaces along each side of the road to provide shade for marching troops were growing well and proving useful for the landless owners of livestock: several dozen goats had been tethered to various trees and, as was always the way with goats, most of them had gone round and round until their ropes were wound up so short that they could hardly move. As it grew lighter the guard opened the door of the lantern and blew out the candle, and the smell of the smouldering wick caught the backs of their throats.

A pair of oxen pulling a wide-wheeled cart passed going the other way and Ramage saw how each animal leaned inwards, towards the single pole between them that acted as the shaft. It was said that from the time an animal first pulled a cart and was put, say, in the right-hand position it always had to be on that side because it became used to working with an inward list. The useless information one acquires, Ramage thought sourly just as the wagon swung round to the right, rattling and bumping as it left the via Aurelia and started down the track leading to the Pineta di Feniglia, the southern causeway which ended in Argentario just short of Porto Ercole.

Looking eastward, Ramage could see that the first rays of the sun, which was still below the eastern horizon, were just catching the top of Monte Amiata and, a few minutes later, Monte Labbro, lower and nearer. There was very little cloud; it was, as Martin remarked with irritating cheerfulness, going to be a scorching day.

The track dipped downhill for a few hundred yards and as the wheels went silent Ramage knew they had reached the sand. There was an occasional shudder as a wheel hit an old tree stump. Then, as the upper tip of the sun lifted above the distant mountains and a ray shone into the wagon, Ramage glanced across at the soldier sitting among the kitbags and guarding the three Britons. He had leaned back and slipped slightly so that he was cradled between the bags; his mouth was open, his unshaven face greasy with perspiration, and he was quite clearly sound asleep. Ramage was not sure when the man had dropped off, but had been expecting him to forbid them to talk. Then he remembered that the man had been both clumsy and silent when the prisoners were hoisted on board: he was still partly drunk from the night before.

The horse ambled on; there was no cracking of the whip or cursing, and it was obvious that the driver was in no hurry to arrive at Porto Ercole: being a good soldier he knew that it was better to travel than arrive: the arrival of the baggage wagon only meant that the baggage had to be unloaded, and although he might not have to hoist out crates or toss down kitbags, he would have to rub down the horse and feed and water it, and, judging by the squeaking, put some tallow on the axletrees.

Ramage thought it curious that the man in point had cracked that whip amid a shower of curses every fifty yards or so along the via Aurelia, and for the first few hundred yards along this track. Now, as they reached the sand, he had stopped. Perhaps he too had dropped off to sleep.

Jackson's head suddenly appeared above the tailboard, the sandy hair soaked with perspiration. The American was holding a cocked pistol.

"Morning, sir, where's your guard?" he asked quietly, loping along to keep up with the cart.

A dumbfounded Ramage nodded with his head towards the sleeping man and a few moments later Jackson vaulted over the tailboard into the wagon, reaching across the kitbags and gently removed a pistol from the Frenchman's hand without waking him. He gave a sniff and showed Ramage the empty wine flask that had been in the guard's other hand.

"You must find that chair uncomfortable, sir," Jackson said conversationally as he took out a long-bladed knife and began cutting the rope.

"A little," Ramage said. "We're glad to see you: we've all been sitting like this for the last six or seven hours."

As the last piece of rope dropped free and he tried to stand up, Ramage felt as though every bone in his body had been hammered with a caulker's maul and every sinew overstretched by an inch. It must have felt like this when the Inquisition unwound the rack to give the heretic a chance to confess.

Ramage sat down on the chair again, afraid he would topple over, and tentatively wriggled his left arm. He moved it up and down until the worst of the pain had stopped and then tried the right arm. Then he moved his left ankle in a circular movement and gently bent down to massage his shin. Finally he was able to stand up without too much pain as Paolo copied him and Jackson cut through the last of Martin's bonds. The three men thanked him through their groans.

"Sorry we weren't here sooner, sir," Jackson said apologetically as he slipped his knife back into its sheath on his belt. "We came as soon as we heard."

"Where's Rossi, then?"

"Driving the horse with one hand and propping up the driver with the other - he's asleep too. Horse seems to know the way, which is just as well, 'cos Rossi's better with a tiller than reins."

"But how the devil did you know that -"

"That innkeeper in Orbetello, sir. He saw what happened - accidentally caused it, so he said - and guessed you were British. He and his brother belong to a sort of partisan group that fights the French when it gets the chance. Anyway, his brother owns the cantina in Porto Ercole. Rossi had already made friends with him, so that when the other brother sent word from Orbetello, we were warned. His son, a young lad of eight or nine, paddled across the lagoon with a duck punt and then ran the rest of the way. We knew the troops were due to arrive in Porto Ercole today to board the frigates, and this is the only way from Orbetello, along the Feniglia, so we waited here as a sort of ambush, because we guessed they'd have to use a cart to move you."

"But just two of you - supposing the French had sent a platoon to guard us?"

Jackson grinned and pointed forward along the track. "There's twenty or so of the cantina fellow's cronies waiting up there, where the pine trees come in very close to the track, like the neck of a funnel. They're armed with a weird collection of weapons - muskets that must have been intended for the Armada, billhooks, scythes, a butcher has the big knife he uses to cut up oxen . . . They're all waiting. Rossi'll give them a wave in time, so they'll know everything's all right. Now, if you'll excuse me, sir, I think we'd better wake the driver and stow him in here with his mate. We can use these scraps of rope to tie them up."

Ramage held up a hand. "Wait a moment. If the French find our guards tied up, they'll know we were rescued, which means they'll start searching for the partisans and probably taking hostages. Innocent people will get shot in reprisal. We must make it look as though we escaped on our own." He thought quickly for a few moments. "Here," he said to Jackson, "take Martin and lodge the driver so that he stays asleep without falling off the cart. Don't wake him up. Paolo! Put that pistol back in the hand of that guard, but be careful with it."

He realized that Paolo still had not understood the idea. "Here, give me the Frenchman's pistol. Go with Mr Martin and Jackson and help settle the driver. When the sentry and driver wake up, they're going to think we escaped without help."

As the others scrambled over the tailboard and dropped to the ground, Ramage leaned over and put the pistol in a fold of a kitbag an inch or two from the sleeping sentry's hand. Then he jumped down, found that his muscles were still bunched up, saw Martin, Paolo, Rossi and Jackson scrambling down from the front of the cart, and joined them as they ran towards the nearest pine trees. Once hidden by the trunks, they watched the wagon jogging along the track towards Argentario.

"Those two soldiers are in for an unhappy week or two," Jackson said. "It'll be bad enough for them when they wake up and find the empty chairs, but you can just imagine what the sergeant and then the major will say."

"That damned major," Martin said as he extracted the pistols and knives from his canvas vest. "He's going to want to shoot them."

"Rather shoot them than us," Paolo said, his voice showing that he had seriously considered the point. "Now what do we do, sir?"

Ramage looked towards Jackson and Rossi. "First, thank these two for disobeying orders," he said with a grin. "Then we'll get some rest."

The Italian guerrilla group had been told that the rescue had been achieved without a blow struck and Ramage had formally thanked them. The five men had then walked towards Argentario, keeping to the beach on the seaward side of the causeway, while half a dozen partisans shadowed the wagon. The cliffs forming the north side of the entrance to Porto Ercole prevented Ramage from seeing into the harbour over to his left, although he could distinguish the frigates' masts and yards sticking up like trees stripped by winter and canted by sudden storms.

The way some of the yards were a-cock-bill and others were braced up as near the fore-and-aft line as possible, showed that the hulls of the ships, with their sterns secured to the small quay and anchors out ahead, were almost touching each other; so close that only bracing the yards of one sharp up stopped them locking with those of the next ship.

Ramage found himself trying to picture the harbour as a seagull would see it. A 36-gun French frigate is about 145 feet long on the gun deck, with a beam of 38 feet, making a total of 5,500 square feet. Times three for the three frigates made 16,500 plus the distance between them, say 120 feet by ten feet, twice . . . That made nearly 19,000 square feet - compared with the top of a cask, it was a good target for a mortar . . .

"The punt used by the innkeeper's boy is hauled out and hidden among some bushes on the lagoon side of this causeway where it meets Argentario," Jackson said, pointing over to the right. "He left it there, sir, in case we wanted to pole across the lagoon to the other causeway . . ."

Ramage's orders to Aitken were to send the cutter to the spot on the northern causeway where they had originally landed as soon as it was dark. If no one arrived by midnight, then Aitken would, in official parlance, "proceed at once in execution of orders already received". In the meantime, Ramage thought it unlikely that many French troops would be available to make much of a search for the escaped British prisoners, for the simple reason that they would be busy loading guns, horses, ammunition, provisions and themselves on board the three frigates. Navy and army officers being the prickly men they were, there would be many arguments: majors and colonels, angry that their own thoroughbred horses were treated in the same way as baggage-train horses, would scream at ship's officers as strops were put under the frightened horses' bellies ready to hoist them on board; ship's officers would scream back, telling the soldiers to attend to military affairs and leave ship's affairs to ... and so it would go on.

Ramage was sleepy, and so were the rest of the men; they all seemed thankful when he slowed down as they half walked and half paddled through the sand at the water's edge to avoid leaving footprints, and finally found a stretch of hard sand up the slight rise to the line of the pine trees, where the fallen spiny leaves of past years made the sand firmer.

They were now at a safe distance from where they had quit the wagon, Ramage considered, and they were in sight of Porto Ercole in case something unexpected happened. It was just the place for them to catch up with the sleep they had all missed the previous night. If they started moving towards the other causeway by five o'clock, using the punt to cross the lagoon, they would have plenty of time, and by then they would be refreshed. He brought the group to a halt, said he would take the first watch of an hour, and told them to sleep. Recalling the wine-bloated face of the French colonel warning the major of the problems of sand in the desert, he added with a grin that left them all looking puzzled: "Don't get sand in your pistols."

The sun had dipped behind Argentario, lighting up the northern slopes of the mountain, when Paolo woke them all with the announcement that it was five o'clock, an accuracy of which he could be certain because Ramage, having hidden his watch in one of his long socks before he had been captured and searched, had lost nothing of value to the French soldiers.

They all went to the water's edge and rinsed their faces in the sea.

"Ho fame," Rossi grumbled.

"We're all hungry," Ramage said sourly. "You could have snared a few rabbits while we were sleeping."

"Or even gone round to the cantina in Porto Ercole," Paolo added, "and brought back wine, bread, meat. . ."

"I might also have been captured and brought back a French patrol. . . sir," an exasperated Rossi answered.

"Providing the lad left lines and hooks on board, you can all fish as we pole across the lagoon in that punt," Ramage said.

"There'll be hooks," Jackson said confidently. "Fishing is all they use boats for on the lagoon. It's only five or six feet deep."

There were in fact three fishing lines and, as Rossi and Jackson poled, leaving on the right the town of Orbetello, a group of buildings hidden behind a high defensive wall and poking out into the lagoon like a mailed fist, Ramage, Martin and Orsini trolled the lines. There were some tiny scraps of fish, baked hard by the sun and the relic of a fishing expedition several days before, and, using them as bait, they caught nothing, Rossi declaring that the lake was only good for eels and every fool knew that dentice was the only fish worth catching.

Ramage just had a chance to see where they should land on the northern causeway when darkness fell, and by then several other punts were round them, most of them being poled by one man with another sitting in the stern handling the line. The punts had started coming out from Orbetello at dusk, as though the men, finishing with their usual jobs, liked to spend an hour or two trying their luck with fishhooks before going home to supper.

The five men hauled up the punt and crossed the causeway to the seaward side where half an hour later, as they waited amid the whine of mosquitoes and the continual buzz of cicadas, they saw the black outline of a boat rowing in fast from the north.

"Give them a quiet hail," Ramage told Jackson. "I wonder if they really expect to find us here?"

Ramage paced up and down the Calypso's quarterdeck in the darkness, nervous, irritated and uncertain of himself. Small waves lapped against the ship's side as she swung slowly in the wind, her anchor cable creaking at the hawse. Overhead the rigging and yards were a black lattice-work against the stars while to the westward the last of the lamps in Santo Stefano went out. An occasional pinpoint of light, like a firefly close to the water, showed that a fisherman was at work, hoping that his lantern would lure fish into his net or close enough to be speared by his long trident.

Aitken had reported that no interest had been shown in the three ships during the day. With three frigates arriving in the harbour at Porto Ercole unexpected by the Italians, the equally unexpected arrival of another frigate and two bomb ketches off Santo Stefano was unlikely to raise an eyebrow whether Italian or French. Southwick pointed out that not even one boat had come over with local whores, a sure sign of the unpopularity of the French.

Ramage picked up the nightglass and looked over towards the north-west corner of Argentario, where he could just make out the extreme end, Punta Lividonia, and as he watched - with the image turned upside-down by the glass, so that it was as if he was standing on his head - he saw a small black shape moving along the horizon, slowly merging with the Point and then vanishing. The Fructidor had weathered the Point, following the Brutus, and was now easing sheets as she found a soldier's wind to carry her down the west side of Argentario and which would, if it held, let her later stretch comfortably round to anchor off Porto Ercole.

Argentarola was the only obstruction they might hit, a tooth of a rock jutting up a few hundred yards offshore past the second sizeable headland beyond Lividonia, and Jackson and Stafford remembered it well enough to be able to help Kenton if he was at all uncertain. No moon yet, but the sky was cloudless and the stars were bright enough to show up the land. Bright enough but insipid compared with the Tropics, Ramage thought.

So the two bomb ketches were running with a following wind round to Porto Ercole, but for the moment the Calypso remained at anchor: her part was yet to come. His plan was simpler - at least, as simple as he could make it. There was no complex timetable which would leave them all at the mercy of wind or current.

Doubts, uncertainty . . . should he, shouldn't he . . .? Why was commanding one of the King's ships sometimes like gambling with cards or dice, an occupation which bored him? He had just discovered information about intended French troop movements which should be sent off as soon as possible to the Admiralty, or the nearest admiral with enough ships to do anything about it. Yet if he did that, the three French frigates which were due to transport a good many of those French troops, artillery and, most important, cavalry, might well escape.

Should he bolt with the news he had, which could quite reasonably be dismissed by an admiral as wild guesses made as a result of idle gossip by a drunken French artillery colonel, or should he stay and see if he could both alter the situation and add to the information?

He had managed to get over the time he had dreaded: sending Gianna's nephew and heir off on a dangerous operation. Up to now the boy had always been within sight. Yet, he asked himself bitterly, why should it make any difference whether he was killed by a French musket ball while close to Ramage or distant. Still, the idea that he might be killed several miles away in another ship seemed like abandoning him. Gianna would never blame him - but she would be only human if she felt that the boy might still be alive if Nicholas hadn't. . .

The boy was now with Kenton and acting as the third lieutenant's second-in-command, which was excellent experience for a young midshipman. Jackson, Stafford and Rossi were with him as an unofficial bodyguard. No one is dead yet, he told himself sourly, not a shot has been fired. In fact all that has happened is that a French colonel drank himself into a stupor and a tired French major asked a number of aimless questions of a trio of British spies who had since vanished.

Ramage snapped the nightglass shut, using the metallic double click to break the train of thought. He put the glass back in the binnacle box drawer. Count your blessings, he told himself: he had manoeuvred a frigate and two bomb ketches right up to the enemy's doorstep without them having the slightest suspicion; all they had seen were three gipsies . . .

He had played his cards, rolled his dice, or done whatever gamblers did in London for the latest fashionable game of chance, and now he had to wait for several more hours to see how good his luck was. He had many faults, and impatience was one of the worst of them. The most uncomfortable anyway, because it left him pacing up and down like a caged tiger (or a sheep trapped in a pen), feeling that he could chew the end off a marlinspike or scream like the gulls that swooped astern when the Calypso was under way, hoping that the cook's mate would empty a bucket of garbage and give them a good meal which they would gulp down as they fought on the wing, snatching tasty morsels from each other's beaks.

For the next hour, the ship slept. The ship's company, apart from half the starboard watch, were in their hammocks and the Calypso too seemed to be resting along with the frames and planks and beams whose groaning normally formed a descant to her progress through the water, with the creaking of ropes rendering through blocks and the canvas giving an occasional thump as a random puff of wind lifted a sail for a moment. The noises would return, one by one, as soon as the frigate was under way again, but now there were only the wavelets lapping at the hull as the Calypso swung to her anchor, the wind now ahead and then on one bow or the other. There was the occasional hail as the officer of the deck checked with the lookouts, more to make sure they were awake than to see if they had sighted anything.

Very occasionally, as a small swell wave coming into the bay made the ship roll slightly, the yards overhead creaked, and it was difficult to know if it was the wood protesting faintly or the rope of the halyards.

From time to time the two dogvanes fluttered their feathers, making no more and no less noise than one would expect from a few corks with feathers stuck in them.

It was not often that the Calypso was so short of officers. Wagstaffe and Martin in the Brutus disposed of the second and fourth lieutenants, Kenton and Orsini in the Fructidor of the third and the midshipman. This left the frigate with her first lieutenant and her master. In fact Aitken and Southwick were only too happy to stand watch and watch about because they anticipated their four hours on and four hours off ending in a brisk frigate action.

The day's rest under the pine trees had been very refreshing although it was a strange sensation sleeping amid so much noise. Several years at sea, with only an occasional night spent on shore, left you ill equipped on arriving in Italy for the continuous and rapid buzz of the cicadas which seemed to be hiding by the score in every tree, for the monotonous 'kwark' of some strange bird that regularly, at one-minute intervals, managed to keep up his doleful commentary all through the day, and for the wild boar that grunted and scratched their way busily through the trees, cracking dried branches underfoot and, as far as Ramage could make out, never going round a thicket of bushes if they could blunder through. Ramage had discovered that after he had gone to sleep, the particular man on watch had roused the others more than fifteen times during the day, uncertain whether it was wild boar or a French patrol approaching them through the undergrowth. There had even been the rapid tapping of a woodpecker, quite apart from the buzz, hum and whine of various flying insects, most of which left determined bites and itches, and the tiny varieties of ants, some of which seemed to wield red-hot pokers.

He decided as he began pacing the deck again that there was nothing, judging from the brief stay in the Pineta di Feniglia, that made him want to change a seagoing life for that of a gipsy, hunter or even a landowner: he remembered how, in a house, whether a casetta or a palazzo, there were the mosquitoes and even more vicious but much tinier flying insects called the papatacci, which stung like the jabs of sail needles, as well as ants that invaded furniture. Worse, if you owned a house, was the death-watch beetle that methodically clicked its way (as though its teeth were loose) through the beams and other woodwork, turning the strongest oak to powder and tunnels. Compared with all these land noises, the creaks and groans of a ship under way was faint and agreeable music . . .

He pulled his boatcloak round his shoulders. Timing . . . minutes, perhaps even seconds, would make all the difference between a sufficient, in other words, moderate, success and a disastrous failure. Once again he seemed to be risking too much for too small a prize. Only an ass put down a single stake of a hundred guineas for a nine-to-one chance of winning a single guinea. He seemed to have read somewhere, or heard a seasoned gambler say, that the prize should match the stake and the risk. He supposed some people did in fact find themselves in a position where they could put down a stake on the green baize table with a decent chance of winning a reasonable prize at reasonable odds, and he envied them; but that must be what made a man a professional gambler - a person who would only bet if the odds were right. How nice it must be to have a choice: yes, I will bet now; no, I'll stay out of the game and come in again when the odds seem more favourable.

Ramage never seemed to have that choice; he had to put down his stake and watch the dice roll to a stop, or the card turn over, even when the odds against him were absurdly high. Yet he ought not to grumble; he certainly ought not pity himself, as he was doing at the moment, because in the past he had won when the odds simply did not exist; when there had seemed absolutely no way of winning. In other words, he had been lucky. Gamblers who relied too often on their luck instead of calculating the odds usually ended up ruined; captains of ships of war who relied on luck to bring victory instead of careful planning usually ended up dead, taking many of their ship's company with them.

Steady, he told himself. He had made a plan and worked out the odds, and the odds seemed no worse than usual, perhaps even better. The only luck he needed (the element of chance that was bound to enter into even the best of plans) was that the wind should not drop. The direction mattered little; it just had to blow, anything from a gentle breeze to half a gale ... a tramontana from across the mountains to the north, a lebeccio from the west, bringing rain, a sirocco from the south, hot and searing with thick cloud, shredding nerves and nearly always lasting three days, or a maestrale from the north-west - just let there not be a calm, which stopped any movement. With the settled conditions at the moment, a clear sky, the stars sparkling, a nip in the air, and the hint of dew, with only the very slightest occasional swell wave, there could be calm an hour after sunrise. The usual sea breeze that set in about ten o'clock in the morning might decide to have a rest for the day . . .

A bulky shadow loomed up beside him and Ramage recognized Southwick.

"Just that one fishing boat still working over towards Talamone, sir. Everyone else seems to have gone to bed."

"Very wise," Ramage said cheerfully. "There isn't much to stay up for, unless you're one of the King's officers."

"I hope all those dam' French officers are staying up late in Porto Ercole," Southwick said, his sniff indicating that he was making a joke. "Let's hope the navy is entertaining the army and that they all drink too much, so that in the morning they all have dreadful headaches ..."

Southwick always amused Ramage by making "dam' French" sound like one word. "If it's up to that artillery colonel, they will. Argentario wine is rather special and the colonel was certainly drinking it like water when we met him in Orbetello and so were his officers."

"So they'll introduce the navy to it," Southwick said hopefully.

"Yes. The vino locale might be an unexpected ally . . ."

Southwick took out his watch and held it to the lantern kept burning in the binnacle box so that the ship's heading could always be checked against the compass. "Half an hour to go, sir. I'd better rouse out the watch below. General quarters once we're under way?"

"Not yet," Ramage said. "We can wait until dawn - the men will have been at the guns long enough before the day ends."

Soon the bosun's mates - cursed by drowsy seamen as "Spithead Nightingales" from the shrill sound of their calls piping through the ship - were rousing out the other half of the starboard watch. Within five minutes the bars had been slid into the capstan, John Harris, the toothless fiddler, had climbed on top, and three men stood at each chest-high bar. With the bars radiating out like spokes, the capstan now looked like a horizontal wheel. A seaman walked round hitching a line, called the swifter, to join all the ends of the bars like the rim of a wheel over the spokes.

Finally Southwick gave the order "Heave round" and Harris began scraping away at his fiddle, under strict orders not to play a traditional British song because it might be recognized by some Italian or Frenchman within earshot fishing without a light. The men began pushing against the bars, and the anchor cable slowly creaked home, the strain squeezing water from the strands like a washerwoman wringing out a sheet.

Topmen were standing by the shrouds, ready to run aloft to let fall the topsails; waisters and afterguard were also standing by, the waisters amidships at the frigate's waist, which gave them their name, and the afterguard on the poop, ready to trim the sails by hauling on the braces which controlled the great yards, or the sheets and tacks which controlled the set of the sails.

The pawls of the capstan gave their heavy but rhythmic clack, making sure that the barrel did not suddenly spin back under the strain of the anchor cable and hurl the seamen away like winnowed corn. Down below, as the anchor cable led in through the hawse, the ship's boys secured it with short lines to the endless cable revolving from the capstan barrel on the deck below to a large block right forward. Holding the lines with which they had "nipped" the two cables together until the anchor cable arrived at the hatchway leading down to the cable locker, they quickly unwound their "nippers", from which they received their own nickname, and ran forward to start the same process over again.

Down below in the locker several seamen manhandled the heavy cable so that it stowed evenly in concentric rings, making sure it would run out freely when the ship next anchored. It was a hot and smelly job; when stowed in the locker the rope was a breeding ground for mildew and fungus; when in the sea it became a happy hunting ground for small crabs and various little plants that grew in the water and often had a sharp sting. It picked up sand as it scraped across the bottom and worked it into the strands so that it rasped the skin of hands like the rough bark of an old tree.

Ramage waited in the darkness with Aitken at the quarterdeck rail, the young Scotsman holding the black japanned speaking trumpet and listening for a hail from Southwick to say that the anchor was aweigh; just off the bottom and still hanging down in the water like a great pendulum yet not securing the ship to the sea bed. Away and aweigh; Ramage mused over the two words, and how often they confused landsmen. The anchor was "aweigh", meaning it was off the bottom, when in effect it was being weighed by the cable. With the anchor hoisted on board, the ship made sail and was "under way" or, putting it more clearly, was on her way somewhere. She "weighed" anchor and then got under "way" or, if she was still moving after furling sails, or was being carried along by the wind, she had "way" on.

There was Southwick's first hail. "At short stay", which meant that the anchor was still on the bottom but the anchor cable was taut, coming up at an angle as though it formed an extension of the forestay. More scraping from Harris's fiddle, more clanking of the pawls, more encouraging calls to the men from Southwick, which Ramage could hear quite clearly, and then the master's hail that the cable was "up and down", which meant that the anchor was just about to lift off the bottom, and, a few clanks later, the report: "Anchor is aweigh, sir."

The breeze was now drifting the Calypso slowly towards the northern causeway, but there was plenty of room; time enough for the anchor to be hoisted and catted, stowed along the bulwark. The cable, though, would be left made up to the ring of the anchor, instead of being cast off and led back through the hawse to be stowed below, the holes of the hawse (looking like great eyes) filled with the circular wooden bucklers that fitted like old Viking shields and kept out any waves.

Ramage clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing the quarterdeck. Plans were made, all the officers had been given their orders, all timepieces checked, charts compared for accuracy, and he had made sure that both Wagstaffe and Kenton had their quadrants and accurate copies of the set of tables on which the whole success of the operation depended: a table in feet and inches which gave, as its title announced, "The Height, above the Level of the Sea of the different Parts of French Ships of War and their Masts, according to their Rates". In fact they had copied only the details for 36-gun frigates, and Ramage had long ago checked the table against the actual figures for the Calypso.

The table gave part of the answers for a whole series of right-angled triangles. To discover the range of a French 36-gun frigate it was only necessary to use a sextant or quadrant to measure the angle made by, say, the mainmasthead. The height was known from the table and became the given side of a triangle - the vertical side, whereas the base was the unknown quantity, the distance or range. With the angle which had just been measured, the base could be worked out quickly and was, of course, the range.

Measuring the height of another ship's masts was a familiar enough exercise: when sailing in company and ordered to keep a certain distance, the officer of the deck used sextant or quadrant to measure the angle made by the mainmasthead and, knowing what it should be if they were the correct distance, could see that if the angle was too small they were too far away and if too large they were too near. And, of course, measuring the masthead angle was very useful when chasing an enemy ship: the slightest change in the angle indicated which was gaining.

This time though, providing all went according to plan, Southwick had done the sums, so that the table included the particular angles of a French 36-gun frigate like the Calypso for the cap of the mainmast and maintopmast, and the foreyard, the foretop and cap of the foretopmast, at a range of 2,000 yards. All the officers had worked at their tables and checked the figures. They found that the old master had not made a mistake. Ramage had not expected that he would, but he noticed from the hurried scribbling that Kenton and Orsini had made errors and then rapidly corrected them.

Two thousand yards... He considered the figure; spoke it to himself and then imagined it written down, first in his own handwriting and then in type as the figure appearing in a set of tables. The first gamble was with figures. The second gamble was that the three French frigates would be secured stern to the quay at such an angle that their broadside guns could not possibly fire through the entrance. He would win that round if they were able to fire only their bow-chase guns, one each side and no bigger than 12-pounders. Six altogether, with a range of 1,800 yards at six degrees of elevation with a 4-pound charge of powder. At that range a French gunner, or any other, for that matter, would be lucky to be able to bowl a shot through the harbour entrance if his ship was anchored 1,800 yards outside, so there was not much risk from the bow-chase guns. Or from the other guns at that range, really, unless one of the frigates managed to slew round and fire off a broadside. Then there would be eighteen roundshot ricocheting off the water, and some might hit, much as a sportsman (poacher, more likely) would fire a shot into the middle of a rising covey in the hope of bringing down a single bird.

No, he corrected himself, the biggest gamble, although still concerning the 2,000 yards, was on the forts. There were two of them, Monte Filippo on the north side and high up, and Santa Catarina low down at the entrance. A third one at the southern entrance was not really a fort; simply a series of gun positions at the end of a short headland known as La Rocca and protected by stonework.

There might be 32-pounders up there in Monte Filippo, and with a 10-pound charge they could fire a shot 2,900 yards. It would be plunging fire, and at extreme range. Ricochets were always wildly inaccurate with plunging fire, bouncing all over the place. When a gun was firing on an almost level plane - from one ship at another, for instance - ricochets were often quite accurate; the first graze, as it was called, could be at a third of the extreme range . . .

How often were the crews of any guns in Monte Filippo likely to be exercised? Were the gun platforms made of wood, which might have rotted? Was there wooden planking laid over stone? Or just smooth stone? Were the French gunners up in the forts conscientious men who looked after the guns, kept the powder dry, and tended the shot, keeping them well painted and making sure they did not bulge with rust flakes? Was the ropework sound, or had it gone grey, rotting in the rain and sun, so that train tackles and breechings would be useless, parting with the recoil of the first round and letting the gun career back out of control?

Questions but no answers. Was there even a garrison in either fort? Why would the French bother, because Porto Ercole was now a port of no significance whatsoever, just a haven for fishing boats, not a port used to supply any town except perhaps Orbetello, whose wants must be slight and which probably relied on Santo Stefano. Santo Stefano - when he and Jackson had sneaked in there several years ago to rescue Gianna they had checked up on its great fort and found out the size of the guns, 32-pounders, and the fact that the gunners never fired them in practice.

One thing is certain, he told himself brutally, it is far too late to worry now; the Brutus and the Fructidor have their orders. They know the whole objective is so important that even if the forts are crammed with France's most skilled artillerymen and bristling with excellent guns, the bomb ketches must carry out their orders, or sink in the attempt. You sent 'em; you get the credit if they succeed; you get the blame if they fail.

Aitken was shouting orders. Idly Ramage watched black figures swarming sure-footed up the ratlines of the mainmast in the darkness the moment Aitken bellowed: "Away aloft!"

After that there was a stream of orders aimed at the men on the maintopsail yard, Aitken's mild Scottish accent amplified and distorted by the speaking trumpet: "Trice up ... lay out!" The men triced up the studdingsail booms out of the way, and then scrambled out along the yard.

"Man the topsail sheets!" This was directed to the men down on deck, and then the speaking trumpet was aimed aloft again. "Let fall!"

The topmen, who had already begun to loosen the knots of the gaskets in anticipation of the order, knowing that they could not be seen from the quarterdeck and anxious to save a few seconds, untied the strips of canvas and the sail unrolled, a great canvas sheet which hissed and scraped in the quiet night as it flopped like a curtain before the wind had a chance to fill it.

"Sheet home!" Aitken shouted across the deck, and then to the men aloft: "Lower booms!" The studdingsail booms were lowered back into place, and Aitken followed that with the final order to the topmen: "Down from aloft!"

There were still more orders for the men on deck. "Man themaintopsail halyards - now then, haul taut!" That took up the slack ready for the next string of orders. "Tend the braces there, and now, all together, hoist the maintopsail!"

As the yard was trimmed sharp up the Calypso began to forge ahead, slowly standing in towards Talamone, on the mainland, as the quartermaster brought the ship as close to the wind as she would sail with only one topsail. Then the mizentopsail was let fall and sheeted home and, as the jibs were hoisted, the foretopsail was let fall and the Calypso, gathering speed, sailed closer to the wind.

"We'll tack about a mile off Talamone," Ramage said. "Then if anyone in Santo Stefano saw us get under way, they'll assume we're heading up to the north, unless they have the patience to continue watching . . ."

"We'll give the fishermen a scare," Aitken commented because the Calypso was now heading within a point or two of the light of the fishing boat which had been on the mainland side of the bay for the past few hours.

"They'll know we can see them," Ramage said. "Anyway, they're probably asleep, with their lines hitched round their big toes so that they feel the twitch the minute a fish bites."

He bent down over the binnacle and looked at the weather side compass. The Calypso was comfortably laying a course of north-east, so the wind must be about north-west by north. They would clear Punta Lividonia on the next tack and then slowly bear away as they sailed down the west side of Argentario with a soldier's wind. The stars were bright enough to make the land clear; there was nothing to do now but wait - for almost twelve hours. The Calypso under topsails alone was, in this breeze, almost as much trouble to handle as a rowing boat. . .

"We'll lose the wind here," Southwick grumbled, shielding his eyes with his hand as he looked up in the bright sunshine at the jagged cliffs of the headland on the larboard side and then inspected the tower perched on the top, having to raise his telescope to an unusually high angle. "Another one of those towers . . . that's the ninth or tenth since we passed Punta Lividonia. All the same design."

"Spanish," Ramage commented absent-mindedly. "This one here on Punta Avoltore is the last before we reach Porto Ercole, isn't it? They should be able to see it. In the old days it would pass the word when a ship was sighted . . ."

Southwick snapped his telescope shut and walked over to the binnacle drawer, pulling out the chart and inspecting it. "Yes, it's the last one marked on this chart, sir. We should - ah!" Once more he shaded his eyes against the bright sun as he looked over the larboard bow. "There -" he pointed at a tiny island just beginning to show as the Calypso worked round the Point" - that's Isolotto. We have plenty of water to within a few yards of the cliffs over here," he added, pointing to a long, shallow bay opening up between Punta Avoltore and Isolotto. "There's a narrow channel between Isolotto and the shore, but it has an isolated rock at the far end and it isn't worth the risk of using it because we can just as easily go outside the island."

Ramage nodded. He had already spent an hour going over the chart, reminding himself of a coast he had once known very well. Southwick took a bearing of the tower and looked at his watch before scribbling a note on the slate. "We're just fifteen minutes early, sir."

"Very good," Ramage said. "I assume you're keeping your fingers crossed that we don't lose the wind."

Southwick grinned as he took off his hat and shook his head, his flowing white hair streaming out. "We're just getting out of the wind shadow of the big mountains; it should freshen a little once we round this point. I was just afraid that we were in too close but 1 think the wind is also funnelling round both sides of the island and meeting here: we'll catch the other - ah, there!" The luffs of the topsails began to flap and the quartermaster gave a hurried order to the men at the wheel to bear away.

"See, it's veered a whole point. Still, we can lay Isolotto nicely."

Ramage picked up his telescope and examined the coast as it came into sight, the view taking him back to a land of memories. Cala dei Santi - that was the next inlet just beyond Punta Avoltore as the land began to trend round to Porto Ercole. Steep cliffs, vertically slashed grey rock, patches of soil here and there where bushes and a scattering of grass could grow, and higher up rounded hills with jagged cones of grey stone poking through. Brown, black and white specks moved slowly just above the cliffs - goats, some grazing, others jumping with surprisingly nimble grace from rock to rock and several walking sedately in line like parishioners going to Sunday matins. The water was a deep blue, white-fringed where it lapped at the cliffs. There were no beaches; it would be impossible to land from a boat even on a calm day. Apart from the towers, it seemed no one had disturbed this part of Argentario for a thousand years . . . Looked at from seaward, but never walked on.

The bay swept on until, above low cliffs, he could make out the angular shape of Fortino Stella, old now, looking as though it had been let go to ruin and not to be confused with the one at the harbour entrance. In the old days, he guessed, the Spaniards had built it there well outside the harbour to prevent any hostile ships anchoring in the lee of Isolotto to land men and attack Porto Ercole from the rear. Or perhaps the Spaniards used the channel between Isolotto and the shore as an anchorage, and the small fort protected it. He shrugged, because it was not often one came across a fortification whose purpose was not obvious, even putting the clock back two centuries and seeing the conditions and problems existing then.

Finally he reached the end of the land, as far as he could see and fine on the frigate's larboard bow. That distant point must be the little headland forming the south side of Porto Ercole, with the harbour beyond and out of sight. He could just make out a straight line of stonework - that was La Rocca, the village at the southern side, while there was another village, Grotte, in the north-western corner. At this distance there was no chance of seeing if there were gun barrels poking through embrasures in that wall - the Calypso would have to get a good deal closer.

Suddenly a fleck of white caught his eye, beyond and to the right of Isolotto, and a few moments later, as the Calypso's course opened up the view behind Isolotto, he saw another. Even as he watched they disappeared - for they were sails, now being furled, brailed up or lowered on board the bomb ketches, which were both now visible coming head to wind and at this distance seeming smaller than water beetles on the far side of a village pond.

Southwick had seen them and slapped his knee. "They're on time, too! Those two lads probably used this stretch here to waste a little time so they weren't too early."

Aitken came up to Ramage, squinting in the bright sunlight. "I can't get used to those colours, sir," he said, gesturing up at the Tricolour. Then, when he saw that Southwick and Ramage were watching the two bomb ketches anchoring, he grinned and took out his watch. "Two minutes early. Who knows, the four of them might become admirals yet!"

He then glanced questioningly at Ramage, who nodded. "Yes, general quarters, but leave the port lids down; don't forget we're a French frigate just paying a routine visit - probably to get fresh water. Our own colours are also bent on? Ah, I see you have them there already," he said as he saw a carefully folded bundle of coloured cloth secured to a halyard and made up to a cleat.

The bosun's mates went through the ship, their calls shrill as they shouted to the men to go to quarters, and Ramage was thankful he had a well-trained ship's company. Normally there was one lieutenant to each division of guns, and when the Calypso was fighting one side - half her guns - this meant three lieutenants and a midshipman to supervise eighteen guns. Now all the broadside guns would be handled only by their captains, who were chosen because they were steady able seamen. They were going to have to be careful that in the excitement a gun was not accidentally loaded with two charges of powder. This was the most frequent reason for a gun blowing up.

He could not spare Southwick to keep an eye on the guns - an impossible task for one man anyway - and Aitken would have to take over command of the ship at a moment's notice if a roundshot removed the Captain's head. Still, the three lieutenants and midshipman would be doing more than their share in the bomb ketches, and he was far from clear what the Calypso would have to do, if anything. Although the bomb ketches had set roles to play, the Calypso was little more than a terrier lurking round to see which way an escaping rat would bolt.

Southwick was again looking at his watch, at a sheet of paper which Ramage recognized as the timetable he had written out for the Calypso, and then picking up his quadrant and, holding it horizontally, looking over at Isolotto and adjusting the vernier screw. Then he examined the angle shown, the horizontal angle made by each end of Isolotto. Again he consulted a piece of paper and nodded to himself, obviously satisfied at the distance it revealed. Ramage managed to restrain himself from asking the old master if they would arrive on time; if they would not, then Southwick would be doing something about it - requesting topgallants to be set if they were late, asking for permission to clew up the maintopsail if they were too early.

The slowly increasing tension was making Ramage look for faults, and he realized that any minute now he would start asking Aitken quite unnecessary questions - was this all right, had he forgotten that, what about the other? He leaned against the quarterdeck rail, in defiance of his own rule that no one ever rested his elbows on its capping, and told himself that it helped steady the telescope. It did, of course, but there was no earthly reason why he should be squinting through the glass; he had already examined the coast, and they had not gone far enough to make any appreciable difference to the appearance of the walls and embrasures at La Rocca. The hills on the south side of the harbour were, from this angle, too high for him to be able to glimpse the masts of the frigates - supposing they were still there.

He felt perspiration soaking into the band of his hat at the sudden thought that they might have left, and used the back of his hand to wipe some away from his upper lip.The three frigates could have sailed during the night. They might not have gone into Porto Ercole. Don't be such a damned fool, he told himself, you saw them there yesterday as you walked along the Feniglia. But they could have sailed at sunset, after he and his motley quartet had punted across the lagoon. But why should they? They could not have embarked the troops in that time. Supposing they had brought, or received, new orders, to leave the troops there and go on to join this fleet, wherever it was?

He felt himself flushing with annoyance and embarrassment together, angry both for his nervousness and his stupidity: the two bomb ketches had anchored in what seemed to be the exact spot and at the exact time. He had not put anything in his orders to cover the fact that the frigates might not be there because it had never occurred to him, but Wagstaffe had initiative. If the harbour was empty he would never have anchored the Brutus, and Kenton would certainly not have disobeyed any order from Wagstaffe. Anyway the Calypso's second lieutenant knew that the frigate was close, and in an emergency he would have turned back to report.

So, Ramage told himself angrily, all is well: stop fretting. The ship's company always boast about how calm you are going into action (which only proves what a good actor you are), so try to live up to your reputation. If battle is an opera, then the orchestra is now just beginning to tune up for the overture, with some of the players still arriving late with their instruments.

Instruments reminded him of Martin and his flute. The lad was likely to have been giving the Brutus's men a tune or two as they sailed round Argentario. How did "Heart of Oak" sound on a flute? The men would love some of the more popular tunes like "Black-eyed Susan", because they seized any opportunity to dance. He must encourage Martin to play more often, especially in these long summer evenings, so that the men could dance. They were bored with John Harris's fiddle; the man had a complete repertory of about a dozen tunes, at least four of which were fore-bitters, played when the capstan was being worked. Always supposing, he thought with a touch of bitterness, that Martin, the Brutus, and the Calypso survive the next couple of hours. Then, ashamed of the dark thoughts that scurried about his mind like a North Sea fog suddenly springing up off the Texel, he hoped that Martin had stowed his flute somewhere safe, so that a French roundshot would not splinter it.

He glanced up and was startled to find that they would be abreast of Isolotto in a few minutes and La Rocca was just beginning to open up beyond it. He swung the telescope slightly - the muzzles of two or three guns poked through the embrasures, but they did not glisten from blacking recently applied, nor could he see any heads wearing bright shakos beyond them or behind the wall. There were just goats this side of the wall, scrambling nimbly along the rocky face of the cliff - goats which would run away if there was sudden human activity. He walked back to the binnacle and glanced down at the compass, up at the luffs of the sails and then across at the nearest dogvane.

The wind was steady from the north-north-west and the Calypso was slipping along easily on a heading of north-east, which would take her a hundred yards or so to the east of the anchored bomb ketches. He found Southwick looking at him, a satisfied grin on his face. The master gave a cheery wink. "On course and on time, sir."

"Luck or judgment?" Ramage inquired innocently.

"Best not inquire too closely, sir," Southwick said modestly. "But as best as I can make out, the lads have anchored those two bombs perfectly, and because no one is firing at them, I presume no one in the Port of Hercules is at all suspicious."

Ramage could not resist looking at his watch yet again. Twenty minutes to go. In that time the Calypso would stretch across in front of Porto Ercole as though heading for the Feniglia, passing close to the sterns of the bomb ketches, which by then should have springs on their anchor cables so that they could turn to the precise degree necessary to train the mortars. As soon as the leadsman was reporting six fathoms and shallowing as they approached the Feniglia, the Calypso would either wear round and make for the harbour entrance, or heave-to, keeping up to windward of Porto Ercole, ready to pounce. It all depended on the guns of Monte Filippo and Santa Catarina, the three frigates, the two bomb ketches, and the chart. There might be a rock or two, even a shoal, to the north-east of the harbour, where no ship would normally sail but where the Calypso now had to go to get up to windward, but it was not marked on the chart. Nor would anyone expect it to be marked there, although the fishermen would know all about it. The Secca Santa Catarina was shown, a shoal just off the north-east end of the harbour entrance, and the chart said it had a least depth of twenty-one feet over it. No threat to the Calypso, whose maximum draught at present was just sixteen feet.

Suddenly he could see into the harbour entrance and there, like three plump black crows perched on a bough, were the three frigates. They were just as he had expected: each had two anchors out ahead and their sterns appeared to be secured to the quay. The telescope showed clearly that tucked between them, on each side of the middle frigate, was some kind of raft, so that the guns and horses could be run down from the quay on to a raft and then hauled forward to be hoisted by a yard tackle. In fact the northernmost frigate was hoisting a gun carriage at this very moment. The gun had been removed - probably hoisted a few minutes ago - and now the carriage was following.

No signal flags were flying, so obviously the senior officer of the three frigates was waiting to see who commanded the Calypso before giving any orders - the Calypso's captain might be the senior of them all. Not only that, Ramage thought maliciously, but they do not have the faintest idea of the name of the frigate anyway because we are not flying her pendant numbers. Nor, for that matter, was any of the three anchored frigates. There were no signal flags hoisted anywhere, and no boats making for the bomb ketches to ask the sort of questions that could give the whole game away . . .

Southwick tapped his arm and Ramage saw the master pointing at a faintly brownish-green patch in the water over on the larboard bow. 'That'll be the shoal, sir, Santa Catarina. Won't interfere with us . . ."

By now the leadsman standing in the forechains was beginning to chant the depth as he heaved the lead, hoisting it with the water streaming down his leather apron, reading off the marks and coiling the line again. Four fathoms . . . five fathoms ... six fathoms . . . five fathoms . . . Ramage watched the chart with Southwick and noted that the shape of the sea bottom being revealed by the leadsman's shouts was corresponding to the soundings on the chart. The pines lining the Feniglia were now beginning to stand out as individual trees rather than a dark green band at the back of a strip of golden sand which was almost blinding in the bright sun. Through the gap formed by the next bay, peaks showed up like the leaves of an artichoke. Five fathoms ... six fathoms. Ramage ignored the "and a half" and "and a quarter" or "and a quarter less"; he was not interested in anything less than a whole fathom; the Calypso was merely getting into a good position, not trying to find her way through a difficult channel. Five fathoms . . . four fathoms ... He glanced back to Porto Ercole, now over on the frigate's larboard quarter, and at the two bomb ketches, and then he looked at Aitken and nodded. The first lieutenant put the speaking trumpet to his lips and shouted the first of the orders that would wear round the frigate so that she would be steering back almost along the reciprocal of the course that had brought her some three thousand yards off Porto Ercole.

Paolo was angry because his hand trembled as he held the quadrant. It was a one-handed job with the quadrant already set at a particular angle, and all he had to do was to watch the centre of the three French frigates and warn Kenton when the mainmasthead made the correct angle. Finally he used his left hand as well, not to stop the slight tremor of the right - the left did not help because it too was shaking - but because he did not want to make any mistakes. Both the Captain and Kenton had been emphatic that the angle must be correct within a few seconds of arc; any error would mean that the frigates were nearer or farther away, and that could be disastrous.

He would not have been so cross with himself if his hands were trembling because he was frightened - he was not; it was simply that he was excited. Who would not be excited in this situation? Here were a couple of captured French bomb ketches, once again French according to their colours, just nosing up to an enemy harbour under a flying jib and mizen, making perhaps a knot . . . Captain Ramage had been very emphatic in saying that it must all look quite normal, as though the two bomb ketches were just anchoring normally off the harbour, and the senior of the two commanding officers would be coming in as soon as his ship was properly anchored, ready to report to the senior of the frigate captains and receive any new orders that might be waiting for him. The ketches must not waste time and fiddle about so that the French had any idea that they were in fact anchoring exactly 2,000 yards from the frigates . . .

Kenton was watching him, speaking trumpet in his hand; Jackson, too, standing forward ready to let the anchor run, was watching him. Everyone seemed to be watching him. Guiltily Paolo took a hurried look through the quadrant eyepiece. He saw thankfully, after being frightened for a moment that his inattention had taken the Fructidor too far in, that the frigate's masthead in the mirror was not level with the waterline that he could see through the plain part of the glass. Almost, but not quite.

"How far, do you reckon?"

Kenton's voice was harsh. It was hard to guess. He had not heard the Brutus's sails flapping as she luffed up to let go the anchor, and he could just see her out of the corner of his eye, seemingly fixed on the starboard beam not a hundred yards away.

"About a cable, I reckon, sir."

Two hundred yards . . . how the devil was he expected to translate in his head a few seconds of arc measured by the quadrant into yards along the surface of the sea? That was for people like Southwick, who could work out mathematical problems in the same way that a child's ball goes down a staircase - it starts at the top and bounces down, step by step, until it reaches the bottom and stops. And that, ecco, is the answer . . . Southwick made it all seem very logical when he was explaining it, but the minute he stopped explaining and asked for an explanation, the ball seemed to want to bounce upwards, or miss three steps . . .

"A hundred yards to go, sir," Paolo said firmly, but realized that in addition to his hands trembling, his knees felt shaky too. He was not frightened, but they should not have given this job to someone who did not understand mathematics. "Twenty-five yards, sir!"

Everything happened at once: he saw the Brutus turn into the wind, sails napping; Kenton shouted at the helmsman; seamen let halyards go at the run and the flying jib sheets flogged for a moment before the sail began sliding down the stay. Porto Ercole, the frigates and the big fort up on the hill, Filippo, which seemed to be watching them like a crouching animal, suddenly slid to starboard. He turned quickly for a last check – yes, the turn into the wind meant the ketch was still sailing along the 2,000 yard radius from the frigates, so by the time she lost way and the anchor cable began to run, the distance would still be exactly right.

Accidente, his hands were trembling even more now, and the muscles in his knees seemed to be turning to water, and yet he had made no mistake; he had done exactly what Kenton had told him; the ship would be anchored exactly right. He put the quadrant down on the binnacle box and caught Kenton's eye. The third lieutenant winked, and Paolo saw that he too was holding a quadrant - he had checked at the last moment.

"Good lad," Kenton said. "Now get forward. I want that spring clapped on the anchor cable as soon as we've veered ten fathoms."

These French galliots were clumsy things, but one could hardly expect too much; they were little more than heavily built boxes which in peacetime would probably be plying between places like Calais and Havre de Grace with cargoes of potatoes or casks of salt fish; perhaps even carrying stone, from somewhere like Caen, which was needed for building a new breakwater at Boulogne. Stone-blocks, so Rossi said, were a cargo which most seamen dreaded. The great weight for a small bulk meant that masters tended to overload and if the ship sprang a leak it was usually impossible to shift the heavy blocks down in the hold to get at the source to make repairs. After a few hours' threshing to windward with a stone-block cargo, Rossi had said, and his experience had been in carrying marble from Carrara, even the toughest sailor began to imagine that with all the violent pitching the blocks were lifting and dropping on to the hull like an enormous mallet, forcing the planking . . .

"Yes," he said hurriedly as Jackson reported that ten fathoms of cable had been veered, the anchor was holding, and they were all ready to clap on the spring.

Paolo looked round at the spring, a heavy rope which came in over the bow but which had been led aft right along the starboard side outside of all the rigging, secured temporarily with lashings to stop it dropping into the water, and coming in over the starboard quarter.

"Right," he said to Stafford, Rossi and two other seamen, who were waiting at the bow, just beyond the mortar. "Secure the spring. A rolling hitch, of course," he added airily.

"Of course, sir," Jackson said politely, and Paolo blushed. It had not been necessary to tell them what knot to use, but at least they now knew that he knew, and come to think of it that was about the only reason for saying it.

The five men seized the spring, a rope of perhaps a quarter of the diameter of the cable, and quickly secured it to the anchor cable with the rolling hitch, Jackson using a length of line to seize the end to the cable. "Always worth doing, sir," he explained to Paolo, "just in case the rolling hitch takes it into its head to slip."

He turned aft and called to Kenton: "Spring is made up, sir; shall we prepare to veer?"

"Aye, veer enough to take the strain."

Paolo turned to give the men the order but Jackson's glance made him pause. The American was staring along the starboard side, obviously trying to warn him about something - the lashing!

"Cut the lashings . . ." He watched as the men went along the ship's side, slashing at the lines with their knives, so that heavy rope dropped down into the water with a splash.

"Right - Jackson, you and Stafford stand by to get the hitch over the side; Rossi and you two, veer away on the cable . . ."

The seamen knew well enough what to do, but it was part of a midshipman's job and training to give orders. Jackson and Stafford stood by at the rolling hitch, the knot making a bulky lump in the anchor cable which, in the bomb ketch, went over the bow through a fairlead in the bulwark, not through a hawse hole, so that if they were not careful the knot would jam.

Jackson nodded to Rossi and the Italian seaman let the anchor cable suddenly go slack; as it ran out through the fairlead Jackson and Stafford pushed upwards and then pulled on the spring so that the knot flicked out and disappeared over the bow. Rossi snubbed up the anchor cable to stop any more running out.

Paolo turned aft and called to Kenton: "Spring made up and ready for veering, sir!"

Kenton, who had been watching the Brutus as well as inspecting Monte Filippo with his telescope, said: "Very well, leave a couple of men there to veer the cable and bring the rest of your party aft to handle the spring."

Kenton had to admit that he had not liked the idea of leaving Orsini to check the mast angle and distance off when they anchored: his complete inability to understand mathematics was a joke in the Calypso, although fortunately he could handle a quadrant well enough, and even Southwick had to admit that he had never found the lad make a mistake in the actual sight.

The youngster had been cool enough; he had stood there watching the centre frigate through his quadrant eyepiece as though admiring the view, and when asked he had given quick and accurate estimates of the remaining distance. Kenton knew the Captain would be pleased to hear about that.

Now the Fructidor was anchored in precisely the right place, and the spring was on the cable. He suddenly had a slightly absurd picture of what they were doing to the ship. Or, since this was the first time, trying to do. The anchor and cable over the bow was as if a bull was tied to a tree (the anchor) by a rope through the ring in its nose. Then a thinner line was tied to its tail and taken to the rope and secured well in front of the bull's nose. By heaving on the line to the tail (the spring that went to the Fructidor's stern) the bull could be turned round to make it face a different direction.

Fortunately, the Fructidor was more tractable than a bull which, not unreasonably, would object to being pulled round by its tail. Now all that remained to do was veer away more anchor cable and spring so that the hitch holding the spring was further ahead, to give more leverage. Then, by heaving in on the cable Fructidor's stern would come round.

The men would haul and veer, haul and veer the spring until he had the ship lying at the angle which meant that the two mortars were aimed at the frigates. The spring, in more precise language, would make sure they were traversed correctly (the only time the words "left" and "right" were used in a ship). They were already elevated, and the gunpowder charge calculated for a range of 2,000 yards.

He pulled out his watch. Time was skidding past; they had twenty-five minutes left. Suddenly he remembered the Calypso and looked back towards Punta Avoltore. There she was, stretching up towards them under topsails, hull glistening black, gun ports closed, although he knew the guns would be loaded and the crews staying hidden below the bulwarks, ready for action. From ahead there was no mistaking that the Calypso was of the same class as the three frigates anchored over there in Porto Ercole. It gave him a strange feeling to think that he had been serving in her for the past year or more, and here she was bowling along on a wind with the Tricolour streaming out, to a stranger so obviously a French ship of war; belonging to a country with whom Britain had been at war for as long as he could remember.

They had reached what Mr Ramage had dubbed the "Gambler's Half Hour": he reckoned that the French frigates would not be in the slightest bit surprised at the two bombs coming in and anchoring a couple of thousand yards or so off the harbour entrance: they were expecting to see the bombs, and two thousand yards out was an obvious place to anchor. That part of the operation would be of no interest to the French officers in the frigates; indeed, apart from someone routinely reporting the fact to the senior officer, no interest would be shown: the senior officer would wait for the senior of the two bomb ketch lieutenants to have himself rowed in to report and receive fresh orders.

The gamble would come, Mr Ramage reckoned, from the time the spring was put on the cable and the bombs were slewed round, so that they were not lying head to wind to their anchors. At a casual glance someone on board the frigates might think that the two bombs were lying to a different slant of wind; that the high hills round the harbour deflected the wind outside. But if someone in the frigates was curious and put a glass on them, he might well spot the spring, even though it came on board on the side away from the harbour, because it had to be hitched to the anchor cable well ahead of the ship, otherwise there was not enough leverage to turn the ship round. But each bomb was showing a Tricolour, so there was nothing to show they were not French. And who knew much about bomb ketches anyway? Mr Ramage had made the point that the frigates might well think that bombs often anchored with a spring on the cable ...

So from the time the two bomb ketches started hauling round until the operation really began, precisely at half past eleven, there was a chance that the French might... Mr Ramage had shrugged his shoulders at that point: if the French realized their danger, they might cut the lines holding their sterns to the quay and rely on the weight of their anchor cables to pull them out so they could swing round enough to fire off a few broadsides, even if they ended up drifting on to the rocks on the south side of the harbour. Or one of them might cut everything and try to sail out of the harbour. Or the alarm might be given to Monte Filippo, Santa Catarina and La Rocca - no one knew if those guns could be used.

Kenton crouched down, sighting along the complicated mechanism with its spirit level which formed the mortar's sight. "Heave in - handsomely now!"

Eight men began heaving at the spring as it came through the aftermost gunport on the starboard side; a gunport which had long ago been lined along the two sides and bottom with thick copper sheeting, to take up the chafing of a rope being used in just this way, a spring to aim the ship and the mortars.

It took several minutes of heaving before the ship began to turn: there was slack in the anchor cable and slack in the spring. Finally, Paolo, watching the ship's head against the Feniglia, and Kenton, looking through the sight, saw the first movement. It was slight, and would remain so until the seamen could get a steady pull on the spring, but Kenton knew that once he let the ship swing past the exact bearing so that he had to order the men to veer, not haul, they might get flustered and the ship's bow would start swinging like the pendulum of a clock.

He told them to stop and belay and waited a couple of minutes, using the time to check that the Calypso was still approaching fast, coming clear of Isolotto and bearing away to head for the beach at the Feniglia, where she would turn and . . . Yes, another ten degrees would do it. He ordered the men to haul in ten feet of cable. The difference was so slight he could hardly measure it. Another ten feet ... ten ... ten ... ah, better. Ten more feet. Now he had the few houses in Grotte, the village at the northern end of the harbour, showing clearly. Another ten . . . ten more . . . just a fathom now, and there was the first frigate. He had to line up on the middle one - although the three of them looked like one enormously beamy ship. Another fathom . . . and one more . . .

"Belay that without losing an inch," he growled and remained crouching, watching through the sight, until Orsini reported: "It's belayed, sir."

Kenton snatched up his quadrant, checked the angle made by the mainmasthead of the centre frigate, found that veering the extra cable had made no perceptible difference, and stood up. The muscles of his thighs hurt so much that he realized he had been crouching for longer than he thought. Damn, the Calypso was closing fast!

He gave a string of orders and by the time the Calypso hissed past a hundred yards away, the shells were ready: a carefully measured charge had been poured into each mortar, a wad had followed, and then the shell had been lowered on top, its fuse cut to exactly the right length.

To one side of the two mortars, away from the piles of shells, there was a low tub of water. Notches had been cut round the lip of the tub, and now lengths of what looked like thin grey line hung down from the notches like dried snakes. Faint wisps of smoke rose up from inside the tub, showing that the slow matches had been lit and the burning ends were hanging down safely over the water. Jackson was holding a short rod which ended in a Y, a linstock, and Stafford had another. As soon as Kenton gave the word, each would take a length of burning slow match and wind it round his linstock, arranging the burning end so that it was held by the fork.

Kenton looked at his watch once more. Two minutes to go. Suddenly he realized that he was soaked with perspiration and that he had cut it very fine. The Calypso was ahead of the schedule! He snatched a telescope from the binnacle box drawer and looked across at the Brutus. They were all ready - there were Wagstaffe and Martin, standing still, two men close to the mortar, and four or five more further aft, all motionless. Now Wagstaffe was looking at his watch and then picking up his telescope and looking at the Calypso - here she came, beginning to wear round . . . Captain Ramage could be wrecking his own plan by being four minutes early. There was only one thing to do - would Wagstaffe do it? Kenton felt his telescope wavering.

He looked across at Paolo and Jackson. The American said: "Early, isn't she, sir?" Kenton nodded; his throat felt dry and he was afraid it would show in his voice if he spoke. The Calypso was supposed to pass northward across the harbour entrance and then turn southward again as soon as she reached the Feniglia to cross the entrance a second time ready to prevent any of the French frigates escaping. Being too early meant that she would pass too soon and the French might escape astern of her . . .

"Is Mr Wagstaffe going to open fire early to make up for it, sir?" Jackson asked.

Kenton looked at the smoking slow match. "Drop the French colours and hoist ours . . . Now stand by to fire," he said, and both Jackson and Stafford snatched up slow matches and in a moment had them coiled round their linstocks as a seaman hoisted the British colours and made up the halyard on the cleat.

"Fire both!" Kenton said and clutched his hands over his ears as Stafford reached over with his linstock and lit the fuse of the shell, jumping back as Jackson bent down to touch the glowing end of the linstock in the pan. A moment later the mortar gave an enormous, asthmatic grunt. By then both men were running aft with their linstocks, heading for the second mortar, and Rossi was busy organizing the sponging and reloading of the forward mortar, which looked like an enormous cast-iron bulldog squatting open-mouthed in the midst of a smoky bonfire. A moment later there was a heavy grunt from aft as the second mortar fired, and from the starboard side a sharper crack as the Brutus opened fire.

Kenton cursed because in the excitement he had forgotten to follow the flight of the first shell. Now he looked over towards the French frigates.

As the Calypso's bow swung round and Aitken gave orders that steadied her on a course which would take her across the sterns of the bomb ketches - but far enough away not to interfere with them - Ramage heard a distant bark of a gun. It seemed to be a heavy gun, and immediately he looked across at Monte Filippo, but there was no sign of smoke, and at that moment there was a second bark.

Southwick saw his head turned and nudged him, pointing across at the Fructidor, which was now almost hidden in yellowish, oily smoke, the top of which was just being caught by the breeze and twisted into strange shapes.

Ramage pulled out his watch, flipped it open and cursed: the Fructidor had opened fire early, but the Calypso was much too early: he realized he had been so confident that everything was going according to plan that he had forgotten to check the time for the past several minutes. But young Kenton had been smart enough. A double explosion and more smoke showed that the Brutus had followed suit and opened fire. Ramage held the watch to his ear to listen for the tick - a useless gesture. Southwick said: "T'isn't your watch, sir; the wind's freshened and we're going to be too early. We've come out of the lee of those damned hills. But the bombs have made up for it."

Ramage couId not see into the harbour yet but his eye caught the flight of one of the shells as he suddenly saw that the fault was his own. His plan was wrong. He had misjudged distances. He had explained to Wagstaffe and Kenton what he hoped would happen when the bomb ketches opened fire, and that the Calypso would be waiting off the entrance to attack the first frigate that came out and somehow force her to block the harbour, her bow aground on one side, stern on the other.

He thought for a few moments longer, realizing that he had lost sight of the shell as it curved over towards Porto Ercole. If the bomb ketches had waited until exactly half past eleven before opening fire, the Calypso would have been out of position because he had made a number of little mistakes, all of which added up. The Fructidor, which meant young Kenton, had noticed this and, what is more, had had the guts to disobey orders and open fire two minutes early to retrieve the mistake made by his captain. Kenton had taken a bigger risk than he probably realized, Ramage thought grimly, because the third lieutenant was not to know if his captain had changed the Calypso's task at the last moment, so that by prematurely opening fire the bomb ketches could wreck some new plan.

Well, Lieutenant Kenton was right and Captain Ramage was wrong, but for the moment all that mattered was that the two pairs of mortars were keeping up a high rate of fire: first the Fructidor and then the Brutus fired their second pair of shells, and the fact that they were firing as fast as they could reload meant, or Ramage hoped it meant, that the mortars had been accurately aimed right at the beginning.

"Clew up the maintopsail," Ramage snapped at Aitken: the Calypso was still sailing too fast as the breeze increased, because the harbour was just coming into sight. No shots from Filippo, none from Santa Catarina - and nothing from the bowchase guns of the three frigates.

Seamen were running to haul on ropes; gradually the lower corners of the great maintopsail, the clews, were pulled up and in towards the middle, a quick way of reducing the area of the canvas and the Calypso's speed.

Suddenly there was an enormous drumroll, turning into a reverberating explosion inside the harbour which hurt the eardrums and echoed and re-echoed among the hills, punctuated by the shrill screams of startled gulls, and, a moment later, while the noise was still rolling and rumbling like thunder, Ramage saw a great cloud of oily smoke streaming up from the middle of the harbour, as though from an enormous bonfire.

A few moments later the Calypso had sailed far enough for him to be able to see into the entrance. The southernmost frigate had blown up: one of the shells must have landed in her magazine. All that could be seen of her were her masts poking out of the smoke: some spars had toppled over across the next frigate, festooning her with rigging, yards sticking out at crazy angles like pins in a pincushion and several with sails still attached and beginning to burn. The weight of the wreckage was making the centre frigate heel to the south, over the spot where as the smoke drifted the hulk of the exploded frigate could now be seen amid a white froth of water. All over the harbour there were splashes, like leaping fish: it was raining wreckage ...

A ball of smoke appeared above the hulk as another mortar shell burst in midair; a second one landed close in the water and exploded a moment later, stirring up the wreckage. A third landed well beyond, over the quay, and then a fourth burst high in the air, the fuse obviously cut too short. Then Ramage spotted a movement: the northernmost frigate was making a desperate attempt to get out of the harbour: obviously all the lines holding her stern to the quay had been cut and she was being pulled forward by the weight of her own anchor cables; being pulled clear of her consort, which was likely to catch fire at any moment from the wreckage of the third ship.

At this moment the Calypso was in a perfect position, but every passing minute carried her southwards across the harbour entrance, so that she would have to tack back and then wear round again . . .

"We'll heave-to, Mr Aitken," Ramage said. "Trice up the port lids and run out the guns. Warn boarders to stand by and -" he glanced round, looking for Renwick "- I want the Marines ready, first as sharpshooters and then perhaps as boarders."

The Calypso began swinging again, to head into the wind as she hove-to, turning back towards the Feniglia and then lying stopped in the water like a resting gull as backed foretopsail pressed the bow to starboard and mizentopsail pushed it to larboard, so the two forces balanced.

Ramage continued watching the French frigate. His telescope revealed men now swarming up the rigging and out on to the yards. On the fo'c'sle men were struggling to load the two bowchase guns. The drooping curve made by the anchor cables was shortening as the weight of the heavy ropes sinking into the water pulled the ship forward and towards the harbour entrance. Ramage expected to see them vanish the moment the two cables were hanging down vertically from the hawsepipes, cut on board and freeing the ship.

So far the northerly breeze had not begun to push her over to the southern side of the entrance, to the rocks at the foot of the headland forming La Rocca. If her captain had remembered to put the wheel over to make use of the little way the ship had from the drag of the anchor cables, he might manage to keep her over to larboard long enough to get a sail set. Any squaresail would help; the foretopmen, for instance, should be streaming out on the yard slashing with knives at the gaskets which kept the sail furled.

Then he caught sight of frantic movement on the frigate's starboard quarter: she appeared to be towing something - it was the raft which he had seen between her and the next frigate; the French had been using it as a ramp to load the horses and guns. Now they were trying to cut it free - and there was a gun carriage perched on it, like a cat adrift on a box.

The foretopsail dropped like a huge napkin being shaken, there was a pause as the yard was hoisted, and almost at once Ramage saw the movement as the yard was braced sharp up and the sail sheeted home. The main course was then let fall and sheeted home - and a splash at the bow showed that the anchor cables had been cut, snaking out of the hawseholes and splashing down into the water.

As the main course was trimmed, so the fore course was let fall, and by now the French frigate was getting clear of the harbour entrance. How far did those rocks run northward from La Rocca? Ramage watched tensely, conscious of a slight tremble as he held the glass. The frigate came on; there was no shudder, so she had not bumped a rock. She had plenty of way on now, and as he watched the masts he realized she was managing to turn slightly to larboard, away from the rocks and more into the centre of the channel out of the harbour.

With topsails and courses set she would move fast the moment she was clear of the harbour and able to bear away to the south. It was time for the Calypso to get under way again, wearing round and running down to meet her.

He gave a stream of orders to Aitken, who began bellowing through the speaking trumpet. Southwick had produced his great sword from somewhere and was buckling it on: Silkin, his steward, was offering him pistols and a cutlass and belt. Ramage took the pistols as Silkin assured him they had been carefully loaded, and took off his hat for a moment as the steward slipped the cutlass belt over his head and settled it across one shoulder. He tucked the pistols into the band of his breeches, after assuring himself they were at half cock, thanked Silkin and watched as the Calypso, foretopsail now drawing, wore round to head down towards the two anchored bomb ketches. The maintopsail was drawing again - Aitken did not have to be told that one did not chase after escaping French frigates with the maintopsail still clewed up.

A shout from Aitken and there was a heavy rumble across the decks as the starboard side guns were run out; then, after a pause as the guns' crews ran across to the other side of the ship and took up the side tackles, another rumble as the larboard guns were hauled out so that their muzzles stuck out through the ports, stubby black fingers.

Closer to him there was a grating noise and a series of thuds as the carronades were run out on their slides. Thirty-six 12-pounder guns, eighteen a side, and six carronades, three a side ... all loaded and ready.

A pillar of water spurted up vertically just astern of the French frigate, and smoke was mixed in the shower of water droplets: one of the mortar shells had just missed and burst in her wake: extraordinary that the fuse should continue burning under water. The Board of Ordnance always claimed that they would, but he was never quite sure what sort of tests the soldiers were likely to make to prove the point. What an explosion it had made . . .

An orange flash turned into oily brown smoke just ahead of the French frigate, and Ramage realized that his lads in the bomb ketches were shooting with quite fantastic skill; they needed just a little more practice at firing at a moving target. . . A little more, he thought ruefully; they had never fired a mortar at a moving target in their lives, and he doubted if there were any officers serving in the Navy who had.

Now the Calypso was beginning to move fast through the water with the wind on her starboard quarter; the French frigate was quite clear of the harbour and for the moment appeared to be heading straight for the two bomb ketches, as though determined to sink them in revenge. On the other hand she might be trying to make sure she had enough offing to run clear without getting close to Isolotto. French charts might not be very accurate.

An isosceles triangle, he thought: that's what we make. The Frenchman is one corner, the bomb ketches another, and the Calypso at the top, on a course which should cut the triangle in half. Bisect it, he corrected himself, and found he wanted to giggle.

A puff of smoke from the French frigate's bow showed that one of her guns had been fired; then another puff warned that a second had gone off.

Southwick looked across at Ramage and shrugged his shoulders.

"Nowhere near us or the bomb ketches," he said. "They must be excited over there. They're going to bear away - they might try a broadside."

Ramage could see the stubby black muzzles of the frigate's broadside guns: whoever commanded her was doing a remarkably good job of recovering from the surprise attack: he had his ship under way and in a few minutes - it might even be seconds - he would be ready to exchange broadsides. Had there been time to load those guns? Ramage thought of the rush to get the key to the magazine, the line of powder boys waiting to collect the powder charges . . . But of course the French might have left the guns loaded ... No ship of the Royal Navy would lie alongside a consort with loaded guns, but perhaps the explosion on the other frigate showed that the French considered the risk worth taking.

The French frigate now had headsails drawing and was beginning to bear away to the south. She would pass very close to the Fructidor and, Ramage guessed, would give her a raking broadside which would probably blow her out of the water. The British colours flying from the two bomb ketches looked defiant but the frigate was moving fast now and the bomb ketches had nothing to defend themselves with; they had no cannons, not even muskets. Kenton and Orsini probably had pistols - which meant only that they were free to shoot themselves if they wanted to deprive the French of the honour.

Ramage glanced down at the compass, across at the dogvanes and then ahead again to the frigate and the two bomb ketches. There was no time to use men needed at the guns to let fall the topgallants: the Calypso's topsails were rapfull of wind and that was that. He gave a quick order to the quartermaster, who had the men at the wheel bring the Calypso half a point to starboard.

"Will we make it, sir?" Aitken muttered, doubt obvious in his tone.

"We might," Ramage said shortly. He was heading the Calypso for the invisible point where the French frigate would probably turn away to starboard to begin her run clear of the whole harbour and the point where she would fire her larboard broadside into the Fructidor.

The Calypso had two choices: Ramage could either bear away or round up short of the Frenchmen, firing a broadside at her and hoping to scare her captain into turning away prematurely, or he could stay on his present course and try to ram or to get alongside the Frenchman. In any case the penalty for being a few moments late would be seeing the Fructidor destroyed. He tried to think of it as just the destruction of a bomb ketch, deliberately trying to keep the picture of young Paolo, Jackson, Rossi, Stafford and young Kenton from his mind . . . why in God's name had he ever let them all serve in the same ship? They were part of his own life. Now the Calypso and the French frigate were in a dreadful race, one to save and one to destroy them.

"We stand a chance," Southwick said, giving a sniff that betrayed his own doubt. "We could try a ranging shot with the bow-chase guns ..."

Ramage shook his head. "A waste of time, and we don't want smoke obstructing our view."

The Calypso's bow wave was hissing and the men at the guns, coloured strips of cloth bound round their heads to stop the perspiration running into their eyes, were beginning to cheer as they scrambled up on to the guns for a better view of the desperate rush to rescue the little bomb ketch.

They began to cheer and shout defiance and dreadful threats at the French frigate, and Ramage guessed that at least the Fructidor would hear the voices carried across the water by the wind. That might be a tiny grain of comfort for the little group of men watching the French frigate bearing down on them and waiting for the turn away which would bring all her guns to bear.

"She has a hundred-yard lead on us," Southwick said bitterly. "She'll just get across our bow, turn and fire and then bolt before we get there ..."

"Why's he risking it?" Aitken asked, obviously puzzled. "Just to sink a bomb ketch!"

"Revenge," Southwick said promptly.

Ramage pointed towards Isolotto. "He has to come out this far before he can turn away - he daren't try to pass between Isolotto and the shore, and the Fructidor's unlucky enough to be anchored just where he turns ..."

Ramage bent over the compass again and once more called out a slight alteration of course. The Frenchman was not increasing speed; it was just. . .

"He has a hundred yards' lead," Southwick said again, this time his voice angry. "That's all."

"Less," Ramage said quietly. "I estimate less than two ship's lengths. He'll be able to fire as he bears away, and by the time he's on his new course we'll be about seventy-five yards astern of him, just sitting in his wake, and only the bow-chasers will bear . . ."

It would all be over in two or three minutes. By now it seemed that every man in the Calypso was screaming threats and defiance at the French, completely ignoring training and discipline. Ramage's only regret was that he could not join in. The French frigate's hull was becoming shiny as spray made wet patches on the dull hull to reflect sunlight from the waves. She was slightly grey at the bow, like the muzzle of an old black dog, but it was just dried salt crystals. Her sails had been patched time and time again, but they were all cut well, and properly trimmed: the man commanding her knew his job.

All the guns were loaded: Ramage was sure of that because he could see a face or two at each gunport; men watching and waiting for the target to come into view. He swung his telescope across to the Fructidor. The men were grouped round the mainmast. There was nothing they could do except wait for that dreadful broadside.

The shell that crashed down on to the southernmost of the three frigates, bursting a few moments after missing the main yard and rigging and hitting the ladder leading down to the mainhatch, exploded in a confined space, so that the blast and flame swept through the canvas-and-lathe bulkheads and reached the hanging magazine, breaking the windows that allowed light to shine in from the outside, and flashing across an opened cask of powder from which the gunner and his mate were filling cartridge cases in readiness for the resumed voyage to Crete.

Both men, thankful to be away from the neighing and cursing on deck, wore the regulation felt slippers instead of boots or shoes, so that they would not make any sparks with their feet; both men used copper ladles and the cask was bound and lined with copper, because copper against copper made no sparks.

They knew nothing of the impending attack; the two bomb ketches had been expected, and their arrival had been reported to the frigate's captain, who, after checking that the senior captain's frigate had already sighted them, did nothing more. The only unusual noise that penetrated the magazine had been the occasional terrified neighing of a horse which found itself suddenly swung high into the air from the raft, and occasionally there was the sharp drumming of a horse's hooves on the deck as it kicked out wildly before it could be calmed down after being lowered.

The gunner was a mild-mannered little man, once an artilleryman who had deserted from the royal service and, swept up by the Revolution, had joined the navy, where his knowledge of guns had brought him rapid promotion. He had enjoyed the promotion but not service at sea. His only previous knowledge of water had been watching the Loire flow past his little home at Tours, on the Quai d'Orleans almost opposite the Ile Aucard, just where the ferrymen came alongside the rickety wooden jetty, usually drunk and always cursing - not at anything in particular, but because the Loire flowed strongly on its way down to Angers and Nantes, before emptying into the Atlantic. In fact the Atlantic was usually the target of the ferryman's curses; the Loire, he complained, was always in too much of a hurry to get swallowed up by the Atlantic.

The shell which exploded blasted through the bulkheads with the result that in a fraction of a second the half-opened cask of powder went up and sent off the rest of the magazine, nine tons of powder. Not all of it was meant for the ship; five tons were for the flagship which they were due to meet in Crete, and one ton was for the garrison. They were due to embark another ton which the artillerymen were supposed to be bringing with them; in fact, it was the knowledge that more casks of powder were due later in the day that had made the gunner call his mate to help fill some cartridge cases: the arrival of more casks would so restrict the room in the magazine that the work would be twice as difficult.

The shell was the third fired by the Fructidor. Although Ramage thought she had fired without interruption, Kenton had watched the fall of the first shell from the forward mortar and even as Jackson and Stafford were touching their linstocks to the powder at the after mortar and Rossi was beginning to swab out the forward one, Kenton had ordered the spring to be slackened away two fathoms.

This meant that when the mortar next fired the shell burst a few feet more to the south. The first shell had burst to the north of the frigate which was now heading for her; the correction made by Kenton had been a little too much - one fathom would have been enough - and the effect was that the shell landed on top of the southern frigate, not the northern one, reducing her magazine to a smoke-filled void into which the gunner and his mate had vanished, The two-fathom correction had, in fact, led to the northern frigate escaping and, in her rush for the open sea, steering to pass close to the Fructidor, to destroy these scoundrels who captured French bomb ketches, sailed and anchored them under French colours, and then suddenly ran up British colours and opened fire.

As the French frigate raced towards them from the west and the Calypso came thundering along from the north, the men grouped round Kenton and Orsini at the mainmast.

"Yer know wot?" demanded Stafford, and when no one answered he continued: "It's like standing at a crossroads, wiv a highwayman galloping towards you from one direction, and a cavalryman coming along another to rescue you."

"What about the other two roads?" Rossi asked. "The difference is you can't escape up the other ones."

"That's true," Stafford said philosophically. "In fact I'm a beautiful woman tied to the tree, and there's my true love on his white 'orse -" he pointed towards the Calypso "- and there's the 'orrible villain wot wants to kidnap me."

As he pointed at the French frigate Orsini said, in the deepest voice he could produce: "I'm afraid the 'orrible villain is going to get you first."

"Yus," Stafford agreed equably. "I shall give an 'orrible girlish scream, wave to my distant lover (that's Mr Ramage, of course) and get swep' orf to a fate worse than death. I can't akshully imagine a fate worse than death, but that's wot they always say."

Orsini produced his pistol and said firmly: "I shall fire at the frigate just as she hits us, or opens fire." With that he cocked the pistol and Jackson leapt to one side. "Steady on, sir," he exclaimed nervously. "You'll kill someone if you're not careful."

The American began to laugh when he realized the significance of what he had said. "Well, I'm sure none of us is in any hurry, sir." Then he added, after looking at the two approaching frigates: "This is such a good race I don't want to miss any of it."

"Nah," said the irrepressible Stafford, "it's the first time you've ever been a prize, I'll bet. If this was Newmarket 'eath, I'd say you'd be worth your weight in guineas."

Paolo was rather angry. Not entirely angry, but he knew that if he was still living in the palace at Volterra he would be curt with the servants. Not an angriness of the fegato, or in other words induced by the liver, just anger that, having unexpectedly blown up one enemy frigate, they were about to be blown up by another.

The English had a phrase for it, "tit for tat", but the English were hopelessly impractical about this sort of thing. He had been surprised to find out from the Captain that the English regarded Machiavelli as "rather a scoundrel", and tended to get sentimental about their enemies after they had won a victory. If the French won this war, then they would set up guillotines in every town in Britain, and execute anyone who had two pennies to rub together on the grounds that he was an aristo. If the English won, or rather when they won, they would probably dance in the streets with the French and tell them how naughty it was of them to have executed their royal family.

Surprising how time slowed down at moments like this, Paolo thought to himself: the enemy is steering straight for us at six knots or more and fear slows things down so that you can have quite complicated thoughts. Still, as the frigate got closer the thoughts became less complicated. Aunt Gianna would be proud of the way he had died. But she would probably never know, because the Captain would not have seen that it was a shell from the Fructidor's mortar that blew up the other French frigate.

He wished, as he stood under the hot Italian sun, that he had studied mathematics more carefully with Mr Southwick, who was such a patient man. It was a pity Mr Southwick did not have a son, because he would make a wonderful father - or grandfather rather. Anyway one could only hope that he knew that Paolo Orsini was grateful.

The Captain was just a few hundred yards away: he would be standing at the quarterdeck rail, his deepset brown eyes sunk even deeper, the skin of his face taut, almost tight over the high cheekbones, his nose like an eagle's beak (though not so curved, of course) as though he was about to peck. His voice would be calm and he would be calm. He would tell Aunt Gianna what had happened - at least, as much as he knew of it.

Who would rule Volterra after Aunt Gianna died? Would she marry the Captain and have a son who would become the ruler? He hoped so. A boy who had Aunt Gianna for a mother and the Captain for a father would grow up a man among men and fit to rule.

He turned, intending to shake hands with the rest of the men, starting off with Kenton, but he stumbled over the thick rope of the spring. As he regained his balance he looked at the French frigate. Her masts now beginning to tower high so that all the mountains beyond were lower. Then he looked at the Calypso. Her masts were lower, too, which meant that she was just that much farther away. Not much in it - he knew that from his very recent experience of measuring the heights of masts with the quadrant.

"Can't be a hundred yards in it," Kenton murmured. "I think now is the time to say goodbye, so thanks men, at least we took a French frigate with us. But we've run out of surprises . . ."

The spring. Paolo looked at the pile of rope. Twenty fathoms or more of it, more than a hundred feet. The spring was holding the Fructidor well over to the north-east of where her anchor was lying; holding her so that the wind, instead of blowing from the bow, was almost on the starboard beam.

He turned to Kenton, after a quick glance at the French frigate, which was now steering almost directly at them, making sure that, when she turned, her broadside would be fired at less than fifty yards' range.

"If we let the spring go, we'll swing right across the Frenchman's bow," Paolo said calmly, but louder than he had intended. "Either he'll ram us or have to bear away suddenly. If he has to bear away his gunners are likely to miss because she'll be swinging . . ."

But Kenton was no longer standing there: with a bellow of "Quick, men!" he had leapt at the spring and begun flinging the turns off the kevel. Jackson was the first to react, and within moments the rope, like a coiled snake, was free and beginning to race out of the gunport, with Jackson bellowing at them to kick and pull out the kinks and bights in case it all twisted into a tangled mess and jammed in the port.

Paolo stood up and looked across at the Calypso and then at the Feniglia beyond her. For several moments the Fructidor's bow remained steady, as though the ship had run aground; then he thought he detected a slight movement just as he heard a splash when the last of the spring slid into the water. It was too slight and too slow; he could already hear the thunder and hiss of the French frigate's bow wave and the occasional thump as a sail flapped.

Ramage knew that not only had he made a grave mistake but he had probably killed Paolo, Kenton, Jackson, Rossi and Stafford, and the rest of the men whose names he could not for the moment remember. He had probably killed them all because he must have measured the distance from the harbour entrance to the Feniglia and back wrongly. He was unlikely to have done that, he decided, so he must have relied too much on a chart which he knew could not be accurate to a few hundred yards. Not accurate for longer distances like those, although it would be accurate enough in giving the width between the headlands forming the harbour, or the length of Isolotto . . .

He should have allowed for chart errors of up to a cable. Two hundred yards would have been enough; two hundred yards would mean that at this moment the Calypso would be between that damned French frigate and the Fructidor. Not just between them, but forcing the Frenchman to turn away and fight, ship to ship. The fight would have been the fairest ever fought in the Mediterranean, or anywhere else for that matter, because they were identical ships.

He looked again at the French frigate, her mastheads beginning to tower high fine on the starboard bow, waiting for the tell-tale flap of the luffs and leeches of her sails or the rush of men to sheets and braces that would warn him the moment she began to turn away. Two hundred yards to go, one hundred and seventy-five, one hundred and fifty, one hundred and twenty-five . . . That was curious, it was still about one hundred and twenty-five. . .

"The bomb's swinging! She's swinging!" Southwick was bellowing. In his excitement he slapped his captain on the back. "Oh, just look at her, sir!"

"She's slipped her spring," said Aitken, matter-of-factly. "That's surprised those Frenchmen!"