Ramage's Signal

CHAPTER FOUR

It wanted a few minutes to midnight with a clear sky when the Calypso glided under fore and maintopsails into the bay formed by the headlands of Foix and Aspet. Every minute or so another seaman hurried back from the leadsman at the mainchains and gave Ramage the depth of water: it was shoaling very gradually and unless they were unlucky enough to find and hit a high submerged rock they would very soon be anchoring in four fathoms close to the beach.

Aloft, out along the topsail yards, seamen were waiting to furl the sails, but instead of acting at Aitken's bellow through the speaking trumpet, ship's boys would scamper up the rigging and pass the word, although the topmen would get a preliminary warning as the Calypso luffed and came head to wind, backing the topsails so that she would stop and then, gathering sternway, set her anchor.

The splash of the anchor hitting the water should be the only noise that might travel as far as the semaphore station, which was now about a mile away on the Calypso's starboard beam.

The stars seemed everywhere, even reflecting in the water now and again as the frigate passed through what Southwick, who was waiting on the fo'c'sle for the word to anchor, would call 'a flat spot'; sufficient stars, Ramage noted, to give enough light to distinguish the shape of the land at a mile and recognize a man's face at four feet.

Inspecting the semaphore station yet again with the nightglass, and allowing for the upside-down image, Ramage was surprised to see that the semaphore tower, or screen, or whatever it was called, was in fact built on a small hill, thus raising it another thirty feet or more, although the rest of the headland was flat, reminding him of a miniature Dungeness and making the ends of the barrack buildings stand out like shadowy gravestones.

Even more surprising, neither Southwick nor Aitken had noticed during their close inspection from seaward earlier in the day that there was a low but wide hill two-thirds of the way round the bay, nearer Foix than Aspet, and as far as he could see the hill ran down to the beach and there was no sign of a road. Which meant that any road or lane from the semaphore station to the village of Foix, or joining the two headlands, would have made a long detour inland. So the sentry was likely to be on the north side of the camp, where the lane came in. Yes, a tiny building they had not seen before - was that the guardhouse?

He could hear the chatter of the bow wave round the Calypso's cutwater, and the frigate's decks looked strangely bare: the red-and-green cutters and the gig, normally stowed amidships, had been hoisted out and were now towing astern, full of Marines and seamen. Martin and Kenton would be quite happy with the cutters, but Paolo would be excited at the idea of being in command of the gig, at least until Ramage climbed down the rope ladder hanging from the taffrail.

He listened to the last sounding reported by a breathless seaman, looked again at the hill which was now just on the larboard bow, and then at the semaphore tower, now drawing round to the starboard quarter. 'My compliments to Mr Southwick', he told the seaman, 'and tell him to stand by to anchor as convenient.'

Which was a simple way of saying let go the anchor as soon as the way is off the ship.

'Rowlands?'

Rowlands was a sulky but ambitious Welsh boy with no brains who enjoyed nothing more than being allowed to climb aloft, and Ramage had kept him standing by to carry the message to the maintopmen to furl. The moment the foretopmen saw the other sail being furled they would follow suit.

'Here, sir.'

'Right, up to the maintop with your message!'

As the boy ran for the ratlines Ramage told the quartermaster to bring the Calypso head to wind, and the order was immediately passed to the two men at the wheel while Aitken gave instructions to men standing by at braces, sheets and halyards. All blocks had been greased again during the day - much to the annoyance of the cook, who had to provide the grease, or slush, which floated to the top of the boiler when salt pork or salt beef was cooked. Although it was against regulations, the cook and his mate usually sold the slush to the men, who liked to smear it on their bread - the official name for the biscuits with which they were issued, hard as board when fresh and crumbling when attacked by age or weevils.

The Calypso turned to starboard, but so smooth was the water and still the night, that Ramage had the sensation that the ship was stationary and the half moon of the bay was sliding from right to left, like the swing of a scythe across stalks of wheat.

The chattering of the bow wave quietened to a mutter and then went silent. The coxswain said quietly: 'No weight on the rudder, sir; we'll have sternway in a few moments.'

The forward movement of the ship, with water flowing past the rudder, meant that the men at the wheel had to use strength to turn the wheel and in turn the rudder, the amount of effort required being proportional to the speed. Once the ship stopped and then began to move astern, the action of the rudder was reversed.

A heavy splash forward, the drumming of heavy rope paying out rapidly and a strong smell of scorching as the friction burned both hemp and wood, showed that Southwick had let go the anchor. The backed topsails gave the Calypso enough sternway to make sure the anchor dug well in. The men aloft could see no more cable was being paid out, and a hissing and rustling told Ramage that two big topsails were being clewed up and then furled.

Everything seems to be a compromise, he thought crossly. He had given a lot of thought to the Calypso's arrival in the Baie de Foix. It was essential that the French at Foix - at the semaphore station, anyway - thought she was a French frigate coming in to anchor for her own reasons. They had seen a French frigate pass westward at noon and bear away towards Minorca; now she had come back.

At what point, Ramage tried to decide, did it become a matter of interest to the garrison at Foix? If she came in and anchored in broad daylight the commanding officer of the garrison would expect to be called on board or, more likely, have himself rowed out, in the hope of an invitation to dinner. An evening arrival meant the same thing, with the hope of a half bottle of brandy. But an arrival late at night - not surreptitiously, to raise suspicion, but without a lot of noise to rouse the sleeping garrison commander - might leave the decision to the sentry. If he happened to notice a ship anchoring in the bay he would probably not bother (or dare) rouse the commanding officer, who would curse him for raising the alarm at the arrival of what he knew to be a French ship. And obviously she was French: they had seen her pass flying a French flag, and when had any of them seen, or even heard of, a British ship? Everyone knew the rosbifs had been driven out of the Mediterranean ...

Would that be what was happening over at the semaphore station? He shrugged his shoulders. It seemed likely. Coming in quietly like this would seem natural enough - if the commanding officer of the garrison was by chance awake, he would assume he could hear so little because of the distance. If he was asleep ... well, he should sleep on.

A seaman appeared out of the darkness to report how much cable Southwick had veered, and pass on the master's opinion that the anchor was holding well in what the leadsman - who had 'armed' the lead, filling the cavity in the bottom with tallow so that a specimen of the sea bottom would stick to it - reported was hard sand and some small shell.

Aitken appeared beside him as the Calypso finally swung head to wind, the hill showing clearly as a black lump on the larboard bow and the semaphore tower as a square top to a small anthill on the starboard quarter.

Ramage pulled his sword round, pushed down on the pistols in his belt to make sure the clips were secure, and jammed his hat down hard on his head.

'Well, Mr Aitken, I hand over the ship to you. We should be back within an hour with the prisoners.'

Aitken saluted, 'Aye aye, sir. I'll have her careened and painted by then!'

Ramage laughed: the young Scot rarely joked, and that he should do so at this moment was an indication that he regarded the operation as about as important as sending a boat away with casks and axes on a wooding and watering expedition.

The cutters had a few yards farther to row than the gig, so he called down for them to be on their way as soon as they were cast off. Seamen at the Calypso's taffrail took the painters from the kevels and dropped them down to the two boats, and Ramage heard both Martin and Kenton give the first of the sequence of orders that would have the oars in the water and rowing briskly, cloth bound round them to deaden the noise where they worked between the thole pins.

Ramage climbed down the rope ladder into the gig and as he sat down in the sternsheets, moving his two pistols slightly so the butts did not dig into his lower ribs, he said to Jackson: 'Let's get under way.'

As soon as the American had called up to the Calypso's taffrail and Ramage had heard the painter landing in the bow of the gig, where the bowman quickly coiled it, he said to both Jackson and Orsini: 'We'll be landing more to the north. Farther inshore.'

Martin had been instructed to take the red cutter in a wide sweep round the end of the sand spit to the far side, to land his party of Marines - who were under the command of the sergeant - as close to the second barrack hut from seaward as possible, while Kenton was to land on the bay side by the second barrack hut on that side.

Under the plan, a corporal would attack the seaward hut with a section of Marines while the sergeant attacked the second hut on the far side and the other corporal would attack the third hut, next to it, but farther inland.

Rennick, in Kenton's cutter, would take the nearest hut, the second on the bay side, while a section of men would run to help the corporal attacking the seaward hut (and also cutting off any Frenchmen trying to bolt) and another group of Marines would run inland to secure the fifth hut, the nearest to the semaphore tower.

Ramage's last-minute change was that the seamen in his gig would land well to the north of the semaphore tower, skirt the hill on which it stood and, as soon as they met the track or lane leading to the village, find where the guardhouse was and seize the sentry or the whole guard, if that was how the French had arranged it.

Ramage and his seamen would be the first to catch the rabbits if the Marine ferrets bolted them. But, he hoped, guile would work better than a ferret.

As the men bent to the oars and the gig spurted forward, Ramage could just make out the two cutters to starboard, each diverging slightly, and ahead was the small hill with the strange wooden wall on top of it, high enough to blot out some low stars, as though it was a square sail. It was high; now he could see that the men on Aspet, with a decent spyglass, could read the signals, however they were made. Still, it must be strongly built not to have been blown down by a mistral from the northwest, the most frequent strong wind along this coast, or the labé from the southwest. Or, for that matter, the levant from the east or the céruse from the southeast, all of which would hit the tower, or wall rather, more or less at right angles. The ponant from the south and tramontane from the north should hit it end-on.

In spite of the cloth wrapped round the oars, the thole pins themselves, not a tight fit, still groaned as if protesting.

However, thole pins were better than rowlocks for silent work, and he was thankful they were fitted to the cutters. Creak, splash, creak ... The men were rowing as silently as possible, and as the gig approached the beach Ramage could hear the slap, suck and gurgle of wavelets as they curled over to break on the sand, and a few small wading birds wakened, calling to each other, passing urgent warnings. And now thesmell of the maquis: a mixture of pine, dried grass, herbs and, Ramage thought, nostalgia, too, as well as a whiff of soot from the shielded lantern.

He realized the absurdity of wearing a hat and took it off and tucked it under the thwart. The semaphore tower began to look like a poacher's view of the end of a barn. And there was the platform on top described by Aitken. Could he distinguish a system of battens - probably forming slides between which the shutters went up and down to make the signals? They certainly slid up and down: that much was clear when the Calypso passed, though he considered hinges on one side, and opening and closing like windows, would have been easier. The shutters must, he thought cynically; go up and down like guillotine blades ... But how did they form the signals? Did the shapes represent individual letters of the alphabet, words or whole phrases?

About thirty yards to go and he heard Jackson, at the tiller and standing in his little compartment that was cut off from the rest of the boat by the sternsheets, mutter something to Paolo, who stood up, holding the grapnel and lowering it over the stern.

Although Ramage could feel the tension and excitement spreading through the landing party, the men at the oars continued the same steady stroke and he felt detached rather than excited.

'Orsini', he said quietly, 'you and I will land first and go round the edge of that hill, looking for the track leading out of the camp. There's bound to be a guardhouse. If there's a sentry, leave him to me; if there's a whole guard we'll have to see.' He turned forward and said: 'You in the landing party - you will follow Jackson, who'll be fifteen yards astern of Mr Orsini. Any man who makes a noise will have to account to me - after Jackson's finished with him.' The men chuckled.

Ramage caught sight of Kenton's cutter two or three hundred yards farther down the coast. It was now near the beach - that was why Ramage had decided to use the gig, which was narrower, shallower and faster than the cutter, and because he would be leaving the Calypso after the others he wanted to be first at the beach, knowing at the same time that Rennick would be urging Kenton to make a race of it.

Suddenly there was the coarse sucking and gurgling of the sand and a grunt from Jackson set Paolo taking a strain on the line of the grapnel. And then, as usual, there were a few moments of chaos: Jackson gave a series of swift orders to the men at the oars while he himself lifted the rudder from its pintles so it should not be damaged in the beaching: Paolo was gradually increasing the strain on the grapnel line with half a turn on a cleat and, as Ramage felt the stem of the gig nudge the beach, hurriedly took several turns to secure it.

By now Ramage, jumping from thwart to thwart, was at the bow and he heard Paolo blaspheming quietly in Italian as his cutlass nearly tripped him.

The frothing water was phosphorescent; Ramage had time tonotice that as, holding up the scabbard of his sword, he leapt down to the beach and kept moving across the soft sand, knowing Paolo and the rest of the landing party would be close behind. It needed only one man to sprawl on the beach and everyone else would jump on top of him, unable to stop themselves as in turn they reached the stem, poised for a moment and then jumped with cutlass and pistol.

As he moved quickly up the slight slope of the beach and came to the coarse, short grass, the semaphore tower on its hill looming on his right, he knew that behind him Jackson would still be on the beach, mustering his party, while the eight oarsmen left behind as boatkeepers would be digging in another grapnel high up the beach to hold the gig's bow as they pulled her a few feet astern with the grapnel Paolo had laid, making sure she was floating and avoiding any risk that a sudden swell wave would make the stem pound and cause damage. Also, with the gig five or ten yards out, she was safe from a sudden attack.

Paolo was beside him as Ramage slowed down, looking ahead and to his left for some sign of the guardhouse. The hill blocked any view seaward of the five barrack huts but - then suddenly he felt the ground smooth, with no grass. Paolo had stopped abruptly. This was the track, running from left to right. Was the guardhouse towards the huts, or the village? To the right or left?

Paolo nudged him and touched his nose and a moment later Ramage smelled the unmistakable odour of latrines - and they were to the right, towards the barrack buildings. Which probably meant the guardhouse was to the left - even the most inexperienced soldier did not dig latrines outside the camp's defences ...

Ramage heard a twig snap several yards behind him and whispered to Paolo: 'Go back and tell Jackson we are going left along the track and he is to follow.'

Paolo was back in a few moments and Ramage could by now see the track clearly: it was about six paces wide and rutted, showing that an infrequent cart had come on a wet day, its wheels leaving their mark in the mud. Walking along the track had one advantage - they were less likely to step on dried twigs which could sound like pistol shots as they broke.

Paolo had his cutlass in his right hand and his dirk in the left, but Ramage told him to put them away out of sight; for the moment they were two men walking innocently in the night; a sentry would neither see nor, more important, recognize their uniforms in the darkness unless, Ramage suddenly remembered with annoyance, the man noted that they were wearing breeches. In the age of the sans culotte,the revolutionaries wore trousers while any escaped aristocrats might still be in breeches - if they still wore heads.

Suddenly he froze, reaching out to stop Paolo. From just ahead of them there was a curious, regular noise. As Ramage concentrated on identifying it and making sure of its direction, he heard several more, muffled and apparently beyond it. Then, almost sheepishly because already he had half drawn his sword he recognized it and whispered to Paolo: 'The guardhouse is just ahead. The sentry is asleep somewhere outside: the rest of the guard are sleeping inside. Go back and tell Jackson I want to talk to him.'

The semaphore station guard were in for a rude awakening. They were lucky not to get their throats cut with a slash from a cutlass; indeed, Ramage knew that if anything went wrong he would later be blamed for taking needless risks in making them prisoners.

Paolo returned with Jackson and Ramage described what he had heard and deduced. 'We have to work quickly', he added, 'because one of the other landing parties might cause someone to raise the alarm. I'll deal with the sentry - knock him out - and I want you and half a dozen men to follow me and go on into the guardhouse and lay out the rest of them. We'll leave them with a couple of seamen as guards while we see if any of the other parties need help. And put two more seamen here outside in the lane by the guardhouse with orders that no one passes - even if they have to shoot.'

As Jackson disappeared into the darkness Ramage and Paolo began to creep towards the snoring. 'We walk how do you say, "like a cat on a hot brick"', Paolo murmured.

'Silent cats', Ramage muttered warningly.

There was maquis on each side of the track; waist-high scrub bushes humming with insects during the day (even now the persistent whine of mosquitoes warned of unseen attacks on his neck, face and hands) and heavy with the smell of wild herbs. He could now hear the waves stirring and jently scouring the sandy beaches on each side of the headland, emphasizing how narrow it was.

He touched Paolo to stop him, and then dropped down on one knee so that anything higher than the maquis would be outlined against the stars. He was immediately startled to see the guardhouse less than five yards away, although the snoring of the one man had lessened considerably.

Paolo had also knelt and, obviously hearing the same thing, said quietly: 'He has turned over, away from us!'

Ramage took a pistol from his belt, made sure that it was not cocked, and resumed creeping towards the guardhouse. Suddenly the snoring was interrupted for a moment by a massive grunt - bringing Ramage and Paolo to an abrupt stop - and then once again loudly resumed.

'He's restless', Paolo muttered.

Then they were at the guardhouse. It was a substantial though small rectangular building, built of rough stone with a steeply pitched wooden roof and the entrance at the narrow side facing the track. Ramage guessed the building had originally been a donkey shelter: France and Italy were littered with them, and in times of bad harvests - and probably war - whole families lived inside.

They both spotted the sentry within a few seconds: he was slumped on the ground to the right of the entrance, his back resting against the wall.

Ramage walked over to him and carefully hit him across the right side of the head with the butt of the pistol. The man gave a low grunt and slid slowly sideways, away from the entrance.

There was a low hiss from the track behind and Ramage hissed back. Jackson and his men glided up and Ramage could smell the soot of the shielded lantern.

'All right if we use the light, sir?'

'Yes, it'll prevent accidents. But you'll have to be extra quick in case one of 'em is sleeping lightly.'

Jackson turned and whispered to the man behind him - who was, Ramage realized, holding the lantern - and as Jackson glided through the entrance, the man followed, opening the shutter and lighting the inside of the building. Ramage immediately followed the man even though the next seaman in line, not recognizing him, protested. A second later the inside of the guardhouse was like a box full of wild cats.

Jackson knocked out the nearest man but they were sleeping in two-tiered wooden bunks along the walls, and although it was easy to hit the man in the top bunk there was little room to wield a pistol butt to get at the lower one.

The two in the lower bunks farthest from the entrance were awake and trying to roll out by the time the seamen reached them and one was lifting a pistol. Ramage heard him cock it and saw none of the seamen could get to him because of sprawling bodies, before he fired. He hurled his own pistol at the man's head, lost sight of it among the flickering shadows as it spun through the air, and then saw the man's hand drop. By then he had pushed his way through the seamen and found his victim sprawled half out of the bunk, blood dripping from a cut by his ear. He retrieved the pistol and turned to find Jackson methodically checking each of the Frenchmen to make sure he was unconscious.

'Six, sir, and your chap outside. One of 'em must be the sergeant or corporal in charge of the guard.'

'Probably. Anyway, hurry up and secure them. Collect up their arms and hide 'em in the bushes. Each will have a cutlass and musket, but that fellow with the pistol may have been the sergeant.'

Ramage saw one of the seamen unwinding a line he had coiled round his waist while Stafford stood by ready to cut off lengths with his cutlass, using the end of a bunk as a chopping block.

''Ere, Jacko', Stafford said hoarsely, 'why don't we just lash 'em in their bunks: a bit of line tied round one wrist, under the bunk and securing the wrist the other side? It'll truss 'em up like a Christmas goose.'

'Good idea: do that. Start cutting plenty of lengths of line. Here, the rest of you, get these Frogs neatly stowed in their bunks. Two of you fetch Mr Ramage's man from outside the door - that's his bunk there, the empty one.'

The American went outside and gave a good imitation of a sea bird - was it a tern? - calling three times. Within a couple of minutes the rest of his party, waiting just down the track, hurried up.

At that moment Ramage, by now standing at the entrance to the guardhouse, was almost deafened by a pistol shot behind him and the grunt of a man hit by a bullet.

He spun round in the lantern light to see that the Frenchman he had earlier knocked out had recovered consciousness, somehow found a pistol and fired it at the nearest seaman. As Ramage cocked his own pistol and lifted it to aim, the Frenchman flung his own empty pistol at the lantern, knocking it off the table and putting out the flame of the candle. As the hut suddenly plunged into darkness, Ramage shouted: 'Everyone outside! Jackson, there's a window each side. Cover them in case any of these dam' Frenchmen try to escape.'

He waited a few moments hearing his own seamen in the guardhouse - the only ones to understand the order - scrambling out. That Frenchman should have stayed unconscious longer than that, but more important, Ramage knew he should have collected all the pistols: his carelessness had led to one of his men being wounded, perhaps even killed.

'Did anyone see who was hit?' he demanded once they got outside.

'Wilson, sir; we've got 'im 'ere', Stafford said. 'Not bad, so he says: just caught 'is right shoulder.'

'Is everyone out of the hut?' Ramage called loudly in English. There was no reply, and he asked Jackson: 'Windows covered?'

'Yes, sir.'

Ramage then said clearly and slowly in French, directing his voice through the doorway: 'Surrender! You are surrounded and the camp is taken!'

'Merde!' growled a voice from the far end of the hut, and another Frenchman obviously still dazed but able to think, exclaimed excitedly: 'The camp taken and not a shot fired? You think we are drunk to believe that?'

Time, Ramage thought; he did not have time for a long argument with these idiots. With one shot fired up to now (and, as luck would have it, at the nearest point in the camp to the village) another couple of dozen would not matter.

'You will come out, one at a time', Ramage said conversationally, 'with your arms in the air.'

'And be shot down like sheep going through a hole in the hedge', a third voice said bitterly. Three out of seven had regained consciousness.

'Paolo', Ramage said, and the boy came to him out of the darkness, cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other. Ramage said in English: 'Curse them in French for fools. I want to confuse them. They'll never credit two French speakers in a landing party.'

Succinctly Paolo told them that their hut was not the Bastille; on the contrary it was a pigsty which would in a few minutes become their coffin because they were -

Ramage tapped his shoulder after a suitable torrent of abuse and then continued, in a quiet voice: 'If you do not come out, we shall wait for daylight and shoot you down, one at a time, like starlings on a bough.'

There was no reply. Ramage heard whispering and crept up to the side of the door, where the sleeping sentry had been sitting. At least four of the guards had recovered consciousness. Two were for surrendering and two, including the man who had fired the shot, reckoned there had been only four or five rosbifs, and the seven of them, when the others had recovered, would be able to overpower them. They would all rush the door, he said. Any moment, he added, more of the garrison would arrive, roused by the shot. 'Merde!'he hissed. 'You saw how I shot one of them. Dead, the way he dropped. They're just privateersmen. You'll see.'

'What about that frigate that passed this afternoon?' a second man asked.

'We saw she was French - her colours were clear enough.'

'Why didn't she capture the privateer, eh sergeant?' the man persisted.

Ramage crouched by the entrance and, knowing the stonework would stop a fusillade of musket shot, waited for a pause in the Frenchmen's discussion and then said, in a conversational tone: 'You are outnumbered seven to one, gentlemen. Your rosbif enemies do not care whether they kill you or take you prisoner. They, through me, are leaving the choice to you. If you are thinking of waiting for daylight so you can use your muskets, let me remind you that a grenade thrown in at either window, or through this doorway which has no door, will blow you all to pieces. And if you doubt that Ramage lobbed into the room the heavy rock that he had picked up from the edge of the track and waited ten seconds after the ominous thud as it landed on the wooden floor and rolled two or three feet.

'- you can now consider yourselves lucky to be alive because that was a rock, not a grenade. I have just given you your last chance. Do you and your men surrender, sergeant?'

'Yes, mon colonel!'the sergeant said hoarsely, obviously deciding such perfidiousness with grenades could be contrived only by someone of such exalted rank. 'We lie in our bunks awaiting your orders.'

'Very well. Do you have a tinder box?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Pick up the lantern and light it.'

Ramage heard the man's movement, then the scraping as he found the lantern and set it on the table, the faint click as he opened the door and the scratching as he began striking flint on steel. Then Ramage went back to the track and told Paolo and Jackson what had been agreed.

Paolo, who had heard most of the talk in French with the sergeant, said miserably: 'Only one shot fired and it's all over.'

'You'd feel differently if you were Wilson', Ramage said unsympathetically. 'How is he, by the way?' he asked Jackson.

'Oh, Staff and Rossi bandaged him up and he's around here somewhere - he's left-handed anyway and wants to find a Frenchman to shoot.'

By now the glow in the guardhouse was turning into a strong light as the sergeant lit the candle from his tinder box and called: 'Colonel - we have the light. Now what are your orders?'

'Wait a moment.'

Those bunks were the best places for the prisoners.

'Jackson - we'll tie them to the bunks as Stafford suggested. He and Rossi can do the lashing - the fewer of our men in the guardhouse the better. Have two men leaning in at each window with pistols and tell 'em to shoot to kill at the slightest sign of trouble.

'I'll be inside with Rossi and Stafford; you stay at the door with Mr Orsini - and you'd better hold the lantern', he told the American.

While Jackson passed on the instructions to his men, Ramage gave the French sergeant his orders and stood to one side of the doorway, in shadow but able to see inside, watching as the seven men obediently climbed into their bunks, holding their arms out sideways so that their wrists hung over the edge each side.

Startled by a thudding noise, Ramage discovered that Stafford was cutting lengths of line with his cutlass, using the doorframe as a chopping board, passing each one to Rossi, who was counting in Italian. 'Cinque ... seis ... siete... is enough, Staff.'

Jackson called: 'My men are ready at the windows, sir. But if there's any trouble, do make for the door, sir!'

'I will', Ramage assured him. 'Shooting pistols in a room is fifty times more dangerous than facing a ship of the line's broadside!'

As he walked into the guardhouse, Ramage said to Stafford: 'Secure that plump, bald fellow first. He's the one that shot Wilson.'

The two seamen had one more man to secure when suddenly there was confused shouting on the track immediately outside the guardhouse. Jackson shut the door of the lantern and in the darkness pushed Orsini away from the doorway, out of the line of fire.

Ramage, nearly blinded by the darkness, made for the dark-grey rectangle of the doorway and as he moved tried to distinguish the voices. Obviously a group of Frenchmen from one of the barrack huts was attacking, or the alarm had been raised in the village and the local militia had been called out.

The moment he was outside the door the first thing he heard - indeed he seemed surrounded by it - was a barrage of cursing in the English of a dozen counties or more. New voices, he realized; not the men of Jackson's party.

'Stand fast, all of you!' he bellowed.

In the sudden silence that followed he said: 'This is Captain Ramage's party. Who has just arrived?'

'Sorry, sir, it's Rennick, but we heard a shot and we thought the guards had overpowered you. The lantern was throwing shadows and in the last rush we didn't recognize -'

'Mr Rennick', Ramage interrupted him, 'don't apologize for trying to rescue me! I was careless, which is why you heard the shot and Wilson has a bullet in his shoulder. But you? How about your parties?'

'All five barracks are secured, sir; all the French troops embarked in the two cutters and on their way out to the Calypso.'

'Did you -?'

'And here are all the papers in the camp, sir', Rennick said, handing Ramage a large leather pouch. 'Nothing was destroyed. There's just one officer, and I took the liberty of holding on to him in case you wanted to question him immediately. He's under guard and sitting in your gig.'

'Very well, Rennick, that's excellent: it's been a good night for your Marines, and give them my thanks. Perhaps you'd take over this French guard - we'll ferry them out to the Calypso in the gig, but first I'd like to talk to that lieutenant.'

'The cutters will be back very soon, sir', Rennick said. 'They'll be bringing a half platoon of Marines with them - I didn't know whether or not you'd want a garrison here.'

Ramage realized that the French prisoners had the uniforms he needed. Suddenly his wild idea seemed possible. 'Yes, it's a job for the Marines - but pick small ones: they're going to have to wear French uniforms. We'll strip the prisoners and give them seamen's clothing, and your men will have to get the best fits possible.'

Fifteen minutes later Ramage was scrambling over the bow of his gig as it was held by several seamen: in the last hour or so - he could not guess how long they had been because patches of cloud were now hiding the more obvious star constellations - a slight swell had started.

In the darkness he could see a shadowy figure in the sternsheets, lying awkwardly, sprawled sideways. Rennick reported: That's the French lieutenant. They've got him in handcuffs and leg irons.'

'You can take off the handcuffs. If he tries to escape by jumping over the side, the leg irons will make sure he drowns. Now, you go back and garrison the place with your Marines and take Orsini with you: he will deal with any stray Frenchmen. I'm taking this lieutenant out to the Calypso and I'll be back at daylight, but I'll make sure those French uniforms are sent over for your men.'

'Very well, sir; I'll inspect my guards. There'll be no sleeping sentries at the guardhouse!'

'Make sure Orsini is always within hearing of the guardhouse: if any Frenchman turns up, the sentries must whistle for him and not talk ...'

'Yes, sir', Rennick said patiently, having received his orders several minutes earlier and understanding them thoroughly.

The Marine sergeant pulled the French officer's arms up, pushed the rudimentary key into the lock of the handcuffs, and then gave them a bang with the back of his cutlass to overcome the squeaky stiffness of the hinge.

Ramage saw the lieutenant cringing, obviously assuming that the removal of the handcuffs was a preliminary to removing his head with the same cutlass. Ramage waited while the man sat upright and then said coldly in French: 'Sit quietly and nothing will happen to you.'

'But - who are you? What happened?'

'You will understand soon', Ramage said, wanting to ensure as much surprise as possible when he came to question the man.