The Ramage Touch

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Twenty or thirty documents of varying sizes, and most of them bearing the now-familiar oval symbol with the anchor in the middle and the words Fraternité and Egalité printed at the sides. What happened to Liberté, Ramage wondered. They were arranged in date order, the earliest on top.

The first was addressed to Jean-Paul Poitier, "capitaine de vaisseau" and telling him, in bureaucratic French so complicated that Whitehall clerks would have envied the prolixity, platitudes, irrelevances and redundancies, that the Minister of Marine and the Colonies had been pleased to advance him to the rank of "contre-amiral". The letter gave the date when the promotion would take place and added that further orders would be sent to him "in due course".

Poitier was in Toulon at the time, Ramage noted, commanding a ship of the line; probably one of the fleet that spent most of its time at anchor, yards sent down, sails stored on shore in rat-proofed buildings, cordage hanging in coils, and, he suspected, always fearing that Nelson would return.

He had to wait three months - "due course" seemed to be as long in Revolutionary France as it was in Royalist England - before being told he was to command a squadron "to be employed upon a special service". There was no indication of which ships would form the squadron, nor any hint of the nature of the "special service".

Three successive letters concerned pay and allowances for his new rank; a fourth instructed him to report to the prefect of the province to swear a new oath of allegiance upon his promotion. The government of France must be uncertain of itself if its officers had to swear oaths of allegiance at various stages of promotion, Ramage thought. British officers had to take the Test Act oath, but that was more a question of religion than of allegiance. Britain was lucky, he realized; the nation was not split, so that brother could find himself fighting brother. One tended to forget after all these years that the French war had started with Frenchmen revolting against Frenchmen.

The next letter acknowledged notification that "Citizen Jean-Paul Poitier, rear-admiral", had taken the oath and was to command a squadron comprising two frigates which would later join another frigate and two bomb vessels and form part of a fleet "now being assembled" and which was "intended for a special service".

Poitier's natural hope for an independent command must have suffered an unpleasant shock when he received that letter, Ramage thought. He was to be the third or fourth junior admiral in a fleet; at best he would be commanding a small squadron attached to the fleet. But what was the "special service"?

Poitier was then told to take two frigates under his command, hoist his flag in the Furet after she was commissioned, and as soon as both ships were provisioned for three months, to report the fact to the minister. Further orders arrived telling him that the frigates would be transporting cavalry, infantry and artillery, and although they were not to be armed en flûte, he was to draw extra hammocks and blankets from the army depot in Toulon, and take on an extra month's provisions, which the army would also supply.

Ramage read that with a smile; the chances of Poitier getting even one blanket out of the army depot in Toulon were nil, and only a bureaucrat in Paris could imagine that any army depot would have a supply of hammocks.

That was obviously a point made by Poitier in a letter to Paris, because a reply, signed by the minister himself, brushed aside "these minor supply problems" and said that a third frigate would be added to his squadron.

The minister told him to put to sea as soon as the third frigate was commissioned. He was to sail for Porto Ercole, in Tuscany, and there embark the 156th Regiment of Artillery, the 47th and 67th squadrons of cavalry and the 19th and 75th regiments of foot. Two bomb ketches, the Brutus and the Fructidor, which were also intended for the "special service", would join his squadron there, having previously watered and provisioned. They would be under his command and could embark any troops for whom there was no room in the frigates.

The letter gave Poitier the day by which his frigates should arrive in Porto Ercole and the date when the whole squadron, including the bomb ketches, should sail, but there was no mention of the destination. However, Poitier was assured that the bomb ketches had received relevant orders and been warned that they must not be late arriving in Porto Ercole. The commanding officers of the various army units involved, the minister added, were being informed "by the other Ministry". This phrase led Ramage to guess that the navy was having a quarrel with the war ministry. Events in Paris probably ran parallel to those in London, where at times a serving officer could be forgiven for thinking that the enemy was another ministry, rather than the French.

The war ministry in Paris had done its job, however, and its orders had been obeyed, because the troops had arrived in Porto Ercole on time.

There were a dozen documents left in the box, but it was obvious that none was going to mention the objective. The destination of the squadron and the fleet, and the nature of this "special service" were obviously closely guarded secrets. The French were wary enough not to commit anything to paper, never sure that ministry officials or others who might see written orders were not secret royalists, or British spies. Ramage finished reading through the remaining papers but they covered only routine matters.

It was getting hot and stuffy in the cabin, and Ramage remembered that the Calypso was still hove-to. Although he had gone through the papers in less than half an hour, there had not been enough time yet to complete the rescue of all the French survivors.

He locked the documents in a drawer of his desk and put the broken box in another, which he left unlocked. He picked up his hat. The sentry came to attention as he walked through the door, and halfway up the companionway he began to squint in the bright sunlight. The ladder was canted to starboard and the rays of the afternoon sun heated the woodwork, so that he could smell the paint as he went up.

The carpenter and his mates were repairing the damaged gun carriage while the gunner made checks with his callipers to ensure that the gun itself had not been damaged. Aitken was on the quarterdeck and pointed to the xebec, which was barely a mile off. Southwick was scanning the wavetops with a telescope and moving across to the other side of the quarterdeck when he saw Ramage.

"Just making sure we aren't missing any survivors, sir," he explained, and Ramage saw that the wreckage now covered a large area. "The boats are going to everything that's floating. One silly fellow clinging to a yard hid himself under a piece of the sail - apparently thought we were cutting everyone's throat, until some of his mates shouted to him. He bobbed out quick enough then!"

Ramage nodded and left Southwick to his search as he walked forward to where all the French prisoners were herded together on the fo'c'sle. They would soon be taken below and a gun loaded with canister shot trained on the hatch, but for the moment it was easier to guard them up in the bow.

They were a classic cross-section of seamen serving in a man o' war, whatever their allegiance, but Ramage thought that among the pinched faces, sea-soaked and bedraggled hair, and torn clothing, he could hear various regional accents. One man grumbled in the deep, slow accents of the Camargue; another, excited, angry, and frightened, came from the north, probably Artois, among the flat fields of Flanders. A third, from his behaviour a petty officer trying to restore discipline, was almost certainly from Alsace or Lorraine.

Ramage knew he was deliberately wasting time: there was only one Frenchman he needed to talk to and he would be down below, being patched up by Bowen, who had so few wounded to attend to that he had turned the gunroom into a surgery, with a piece of canvas stretched across the table with short lengths of rope ready, if necessary, to strap down a patient if the pain became too bad: there was no rum yet distilled that could deaden the rasp of a saw if a limb was being amputated.

As Ramage walked into the gunroom he saw that the tub, conveniently placed to hold "wings and limbs", was empty. There were perhaps two dozen wounded Frenchmen waiting outside the gunroom door, but they were patiently sitting on the deck.

The sheet of canvas was soaked with blood; Bowen, the man who had been one of Wimpole Street's finest surgeons until his practice was ruined when he became a drunkard and was forced into the navy - to be cured of drinking by a ruthless Ramage - looked up, apron stained red, as Ramage spoke to him.

"Ah, sir; a most successful action: my congratulations. A frigate sunk and hardly any work for me. One funeral for you, and there's a young Frenchman I'm worried about."

Ramage nodded, already experiencing the familiar nausea that always made him feel faint at the sight of all the medical instruments laid out on another piece of canvas stretched on the deck, with a loblolly man kneeling beside it, ready to pass in a moment whatever Bowen called for.

"Let me have your report when you've finished treating everyone. Now, that French officer . . ."

"Ah, leg wound. Nothing serious - lacerations of the gastrocnemius and the tibialis anticus muscles. Pieces of splinter - I've extracted them all. Plenty of blood at the time but he's been bandaged up and given a stiff tot of rum. Apart from changing the dressings in a day or two, he's quite all right. He can walk, but I've put him in Martin's cabin until I had time to get orders from you, sir."

"Very well, Bowen, thank you. I'll take him away because I want to talk to him."

"He's still weak from the loss of blood, sir," Bowen said cautioningly. "I must still consider him my patient."

"I have a terrible reputation for torturing wounded prisoners," Ramage said dryly, and Bowen grinned. "I know, sir; you tortured me enough!"

"But you can give a man a tot of rum now, and never feel the need . . ."

"Oh yes, sir, the torture was effective enough!"

"Right, now which is Martin's cabin?"

He walked over to the tiny hutch Bowen pointed at as he called for an instrument and turned back to the seaman lashed down on the table. "Keep still, you oaf," he said in appalling French. "Because of my skill you will keep the arm. But not, certainly not, if you wriggle like an eel."

The little cabin was lit only by the gunroom skylight, and Ramage saw the man lying in the cot, the lower part of his left leg swollen by the dressings and the trouser leg cut away almost to the crotch. The grey-haired man was lying almost at attention, but he looked defeated. Not defeated in battle, Ramage thought, but defeated by life. He had good, almost fine features, and Ramage wondered whether he was what the Revolutionaries would have called an aristo who, to save his life, land or because of a change of heart, had joined the Revolutionaries but had never become of the Revolution because someone who had not fought or shouted at the barricades or howled at the guillotine platforms was never fully accepted. What, apart from losing his ship, which was a risk any naval officer took, made his face sag and his body look, even recumbent on the cot, as though it had just received five hundred lashes?

"Admiral Poitier," Ramage said quietly from the doorway, "can you walk up to my cabin or shall I get a couple of men to carry you?"

The man had gone rigid for a moment, a movement which brought another stab of pain to his leg, but he slowly relaxed when he realized that there were many ways by which Ramage could have learned his name and rank.

"I can walk slowly," Poitier said, sitting up in the swinging cot and putting his right leg on the deck as he looked round for something to grip. Ramage held out a hand and a moment later, with a deep grunt, Poitier was standing beside him. He was not as tall as Ramage remembered, and there was the smell of rum on his breath, but he was sober enough.

"Your surgeon," he muttered, "he did a fine job. Just cuts, from splinters. No permanent damage - if I understood his French correctly."

Ramage stood back as the man hobbled from the cabin, glanced at the seaman stretched on the table and murmured a few words of encouragement, and then made his way up the companionway, able to walk more easily than Ramage expected because the kneecap had not been damaged.

Ramage led the way to his cabin, then stood back at the top of the companionway, noting Poitier's obvious familiarity with this type of ship: the duck of the head at the fifth step of the companionway to avoid a deck beam, sharp turn aft at the bottom to enter the captain's cabin, the nod to the Marine sentry who came to attention and was obviously about to challenge Poitier until he saw Ramage following.

Inside the cabin, Ramage twisted the armchair round until it faced the desk, and gestured towards it. Poitier sat down carefully, as though expecting it to be some trick chair with arms that would seize him, and then he sighed as it gave him relief from the pain in his leg. Ramage tossed his hat on to the settee and sat in the straight-backed chair at the desk. He took a key from his pocket, opened the lower drawer and took out the documents, putting them squarely in front of him on the desk.

"Admiral," he said quietly, "I must congratulate you on your recent promotion -"

Poitier inclined his head in acknowledgement. This too was information the Englishman had obviously obtained from some of the men.

"- which I imagine you never expected. You are a Breton, no?"

Poitier nodded. "You speak very good French, Captain. Fluent, in fact. I would have -" he paused for a moment, his eyes searching Ramage's face warily. "Do you come from Paris? Are you a royalist?"

Ramage shook his head. "You flatter me. No, I am English. I must apologize for not introducing myself: my name is Ramage, Nicholas Ramage." He pronounced the name in the French way, and Poitier seemed to freeze.

"Lord Ramage?" he asked, seeming breathless, his hands grasping the arms of the chair as though he expected to be tipped out of it at any moment.

"Yes - why? Is my reputation so bad?"

Admiral Poitier shook his head. "Not bad in that sense . . ."

"What sense?" Ramage asked, curious but at the same time flattered that the French in Toulon had even heard of him, let alone given him an assessment.

"Well, talk from the West Indies . . . that you abandoned drowning men after sinking their ships - that sort of thing."

Ramage thought back over several years in the Caribbean; he remembered the trouble and risks he had taken to rescue the survivors - scores, indeed hundreds of them - in the action in which he had captured the Calypso. Risks, because the rescued were so numerous they could have seized the ship from the rescuers, and that had led to a warning from his own admiral. In crossing the Atlantic the story had undergone a radical change ...

He looked directly at Admiral Poitier. "Do you believe such stories now?"

Poitier shook his head vigorously. "I do not believe them now and I did not really believe them then. You understand that newspapers like Le Moniteur have to print stories of British atrocities." He gave a short, dry laugh. "Now I think about it, I should really have been able to say: 'Yes, Captain Lord Ramage?' when you came down to me in the cabin and addressed me as 'Admiral Poitier'. The attack on Porto Ercole, the sinking of one of my frigates using one of my own bomb ketches . . . yes, it has the Ramage touch."

"You flatter me," Ramage said, thinking that Admiral Poitier's compliment meant a good deal more than the grudging treatment he had recently received from the commander-in-chief on the Jamaica Station. "However . . ." he said, his tone changing to indicate that the conversation was now taking a different turn, "I believe you were engaged upon 'a special service', with your frigates and the bomb ketches."

"Of course not," Poitier said slowly, as if considering each word. "Just a routine cruise."

"With bomb ketches?"

"I met them by chance."

"But three frigates and two bomb ketches - an unusual squadron to be cruising in the Mediterranean, you must admit. What targets are there for bomb ketches? With few ships of my own country - this one is almost an exception - in the Mediterranean, is not a squadron of three frigates rather large?"

Poitier could not see that the documents on the desk came from his own cabin in the Furet, Ramage realized. Most British naval officers would know that such grey-tinted paper would not be used by the Admiralty or commanders-in-chief, but, after years of war, a Frenchman would have forgotten that really white paper still existed.

"Admiral," Ramage began, tapping the small pile of documents, "I have been -"

He had heard someone clattering down the companionway and now the sentry knocking on the door interrupted him. "Captain, sir: Mr Aitken would like to see you."

"Send him in."

Aitken had a broad grin on his face and Ramage realized that the Scot was a handsome fellow, a fact which was usually disguised by his sombre expression.

Noting Poitier's presence, the first lieutenant said: "May I report to you privately, sir?"

Damn! Ramage had spent some time leading up to the right moment - creating it, in fact - when he would confront Poitier and force the secret of the expedition out of him. Now Aitken had arrived at the wrong moment. Yet Aitken would not have intruded unless. . . Ramage picked up his hat and followed the Scotsman from the cabin, telling the sentry to latch back the door and keep an eye on the prisoner.

Halfway up the companionway Ramage hissed up at Aitken: "What's happened?"

"That xebec, sir: Wagstaffe's sent it. Orsini's brought news of what happened at Porto Ercole."

Ramage stopped climbing. "What happened that we don't know about?"

"Well, nothing really important, sir," Aitken said lamely. "I just thought -"

"Very well, tell Orsini to wait: I want half an hour with this French officer ..."

Aitken acknowledged the order and Ramage went down the companionway, apologized to a startled Poitier for the interruption, and sat down at his desk after dropping his hat on the settee once again.

"We were discussing your orders," he reminded Poitier, "and you claimed you were on a routine cruise."

"Yes," Poitier said, obviously becoming bored, as well as tired and shaky from his leg wound. "A routine cruise. We'd sighted nothing; we needed wood and water . . ."

"Why choose Porto Ercole and not a large port like Leghorn?"

"Light winds," Poitier said smoothly. "It would have taken days -"

"But you arrived off Argentario from the direction of Leghorn," Ramage interrupted. "I saw you."

"That is true," Poitier admitted. "I like Porto Ercole. The wine, plenty of wild boar from the Maremma, as much fresh water and wood as we need . . ." The Frenchman's voice had a confidential note, as though he was confessing to Ramage that he had a weakness for roast boar.

Ramage nodded understandingly but then the Frenchman saw his eyes narrow, the skin over his cheeks and nose tautening, and his left hand slap down three or four times on some papers, the heavy signet ring on the little finger banging on the desk top. "Admiral, you were engaged in some secret operation. I want to know what it was."

Poitier held out his hands, palms upwards. "Yes, I admit it, of course. The bomb ketches give that away. The details I do not know: they were secret, you understand - probably only the Minister of Marine and a few others would know the details. Nothing was in writing - except for assembling some of the ships. Only the senior army commanders and the admirals received verbal orders about the destination. You do the same in England."

Ramage did not bother to contradict him; there was no point in telling him that the details of most secret operations were usually the talk of fashionable London drawing rooms for days and weeks beforehand. The idea of a secret operation being mounted from Britain was almost ludicrous, unless only one or two ships were involved.

"Nevertheless, because your role in this operation is now over, Admiral, I should be interested to know what it was."

Poitier eased his wounded leg and nodded. "Yes, I suppose there can be no harm in telling you: the seamen in all three frigates knew - the regular ship gossip, of course. We were to embark cavalry, infantry and artillery at Porto Ercole and carry them elsewhere. We were doing that when my - when your," he corrected himself, "bomb ketches attacked."

"Where were you to transport them?"

Poitier shrugged his shoulders most convincingly. "I do not know: I was expecting a messenger hourly from the Minister in Paris with further orders. He had not arrived when you attacked."

Ramage saw that the Frenchman had been quick with his story and it was convincing enough for Poitier to be able to keep to it. The messenger from Paris . . . delayed as the frigates prepared to sail... so likely, so readily understood by an enemy officer. Poitier might be feeling weary and his leg might hurt, but he was thinking quickly and clearly. Very well, the pressure must be applied; another turn taken up on the rack.

Ramage said quickly but firmly, his fingers tapping on the papers as though it was a nervous habit: "I must know your ultimate destination, Admiral. It affects the safety of my country and the lives of my countrymen."

"I am sorry I cannot help you, Lord Ramage," Poitier said regretfully. "I am a prisoner and no further use to my own country, but I was told so little."

The Frenchman had changed in the last few minutes - from the time that Aitken had come in. His complexion was less grey, his face less lined, and he was sitting upright in the chair now, as though this was his cabin and Ramage merely a tiresome visitor. Ramage felt instinctively that the longer he kept the admiral sitting there in the armchair the less chance he had of wringing any secrets out of him. The Frenchman's confidence had imperceptibly returned. Now was the time for gentle threats - and perhaps some that were not so gentle.

"I have no wish to be burdened with so many prisoners," Ramage said conversationally, "so I am proposing to land all of you at Porto Ercole, providing each of you signs the usual agreement not to serve again until regularly exchanged. You agree to that?"

Poitier nodded eagerly, wincing as the movement jerked his leg. "Yes, of course. It is generous of you. You can go into Porto Ercole under a flag of truce."

"Very well, we shall do that. However, there is one small question. Small for me," he said, tapping the papers again, "but of more consequence for you."

Poitier looked at him warily. "What is it? I've agreed to the exchange - which takes nearly three hundred prisoners off your hands. They could rise and take your ship."

"They could not," Ramage said shortly. "We rescued them from drowning, but any sign that they are not suitably grateful means that they get a whiff of canister shot fired into the middle of them. No, I was thinking of your own particular position."

"My own position? Well, if I sign an exchange agreement, presumably you will put me on shore with the rest. You will have my parole."

"Yes," Ramage said carefully, "and at the moment, only two people know that you did not dispose of your most secret papers - you, and me."

Poitier went white, making a curious grasping movement with his hands, as though afraid he would fall from the chair. "What . . . what do you mean?"

"If your Minister of Marine and Colonies knew that you had not destroyed these papers - even though the Furet had been overtaken by an enemy ship, had hauled down her colours and was sinking - I think we know what would happen to you. You recognize them" - he held them up and when he had put them down he reached for the box and held it up, "- and the weighted box? Bottom right-hand drawer of your desk?"

When Poitier made no answer Ramage said: "The guillotine, I imagine."

Poitier nodded dumbly. "Yes, they would suspect a plot. Collusion, in fact. My family in Britanny would be punished. Our land would be confiscated. There would be no end to it."

"Exactly," Ramage said, hating what he was having to do but knowing that he had no choice. "That young lieutenant of yours knows nothing and suspects nothing. I presume the captain disposed of his papers?"

"I don't know," Poitier admitted. "I did not see him, but anyway it hardly matters now - he is dead and the ship is sunk and obviously you do not have them. Had I seen him throwing them over the side it would have reminded me, but the ship was beginning to sink so fast and you were so close in our wake ... we were concerned -"

"With staying alive," Ramage interrupted with deliberate cruelty, trying to make it easier for Poitier to agree to what he was about to propose. "A broadside pour l'honneur du pavilion and then a hurried surrender."

"It was not like that," Poitier protested. "We had to bear up to slow the ship - her speed was ripping away the planks . . ."

Ramage shrugged. "You will have to convince your minister about that, not me. But the affair of the secret papers - that is the thing which could send you to the guillotine."

"Will send me to the guillotine," Poitier said.

"Yes, if it becomes known in Paris I am sure it will."

Poitier glanced up at the word "if", caught Ramage's eye and said frankly: "You are offering me some kind of exchange? What can I bargain with?"

"You can have all these papers -" Ramage pushed them towards him across the top of the desk, "- in exchange for one piece of information. Once I have it, you will be free to go out to the quarter gallery and throw them over the side. Or you can put them in your pocket."

"What piece of information ?" Poitier blurted out.

"What is that 'special service'?"

Poitier's head dropped and his eyes closed. For a moment Ramage thought he had fainted. With a great effort he pulled himself together, sat upright and, looking directly at Ramage, said: "There is no 'special service' now. I doubt if you will believe me but it has been cancelled. One of the minister's aides came to tell me, and the fleet -" he broke off, as if deciding to keep the rest secret.

Ramage pulled the documents back across the desk and began straightening them up, so that their top edges were level. "I think you had better prepare yourself for the guillotine, Admiral. I'm sorry."

Poitier looked Ramage straight in the eye. "There is no reason why you should believe me, but I hope you will listen for a moment. The 'special service' is cancelled - not just postponed but cancelled - so I suppose there is nothing treasonable in my telling you about it.

"A fleet was being assembled in Toulon and Cartagena - there were to be several Spanish ships of the line accompanying us, but no Spanish troops - with transports. Troops were collecting from all over France, but to make up the required strength it was decided to use some forces from the Army of Italy - the men I was to collect at Porto Ercole. They were stationed at various places in the local province - at Grosseto, I think the town was called.

"As you have read in those letters, I was to sail from Toulon with three frigates, meet two bomb ketches at Porto Ercole, embark all these soldiers, and then sail for the rendezvous with the fleet."

Ramage held up his hand. "Where was the rendezvous?"

"At Candia. The fleet was to have sailed for Crete soon after me, although it was due to arrive there first, because I was expected to lose time embarking the troops at Porto Ercole - the army," he said without malice, "is rarely punctual."

He paused for a moment, as though collecting his thoughts. Or, Ramage realized, hurriedly making up more of a story, or ornamenting it. Up to now the story rang true though: certainly it seemed likely, and it was borne out by the letters.

"Where was I? Oh yes, the rendezvous at Candia. That was arranged, and according to the orders I had already received my three frigates provisioned and watered in Toulon for three months. You understand that provisions are difficult to obtain in France these days, and I had a struggle to get even a small amount of cordage and canvas to have as a reserve. I still had to get the extra month's provisions for the troops we were to embark in Porto Ercole.

"Then the minister's aide arrived in Porto Ercole yesterday, while we were loading troops, with the news that the whole operation had been cancelled. The admiral was told that half his ships of the line (five out of eleven) were to be laid up in ordinary, and all the seamen from those five ships with less than a year's experience at sea were to be handed over to the army.

"The orders for myself were that I should pick up the troops in Porto Ercole as arranged, and proceed to Candia. There I was to land the troops, who were to take up garrison duties in the island. The two bomb ketches were to remain there to give some protection to what is otherwise a poorly defended anchorage. Having escorted the bomb ketches and disembarked the troops, I was to return to Toulon with the frigates."

Ramage asked: "Where was the fleet to land this army?"

Poitier paused for a good minute, obviously weighing up his answer. Finally he said: "I cannot tell you. You could guess. There is only one place for which Bonaparte might again consider risking an army and a fleet."

Again? Ramage realized that Poitier wanted him to guess. "Egypt? Where he's already lost an army and a fleet?"

Poitier looked away and in his own mind had not mentioned the word. "The point of the great rendezvous of the fleet in Candia was that we did not think you British would look there, should you learn that we were assembling ships."

Ramage was about to comment that the Calypso comprised about the entire British force in the Mediterranean but held his tongue and gathered up the secret papers. "The letter cancelling the main operation and the orders that you should carry on to Candia are not here."

Poitier looked startled, as though just discovering a theft. But he was also quite clearly trying to remember something. Suddenly he began taking a few folded papers from a trouser pocket. He sorted through them and found letters which were still folded.

Poitier pulled them out with a smile on his face. "These were given me by the minister's aide yesterday: I forgot to put them away with all the other papers, otherwise you would have read them. They belong with the others. Perhaps you will allow me ..." With that Poitier tucked them under the pile, so that they were in date order.

Ramage, admiring the man's subtlety, picked up the pile again. The extra letters were bloodstained and creased.

"Assure yourself of their genuineness and then read them," Poitier said.

Ramage took the first one and examined the seal again, holding the paper against the light to see the watermark, although given the circumstances in which he had obtained the papers, there could be no trickery. He unfolded the letter and read it. Blood had dried across one corner but had not blurred the writing.

It was a copy of a letter from the War Minister himself and addressed to General Bruiton, commanding the French forces at Candia. It said that the attempt on Egypt, of which he had been apprised and for which he had been ordered to prepare provisions and fresh water, had been cancelled, and instructed him what to do with his ships and men. However, because General Bruiton's force had suffered such losses from sickness and desertion in Crete, the troops at present embarked in the vessels commanded by Admiral Poitier were to be landed in Candia to form part of the garrison. The two bomb ketches were to remain at Candia and form part of its defences, the navy instructing the army in the use of the mortars, and once this was done the crews of the two vessels would be put on board "whichever of the frigates Admiral Poitier specified".

Ramage read the letter a second time. Yes, this would be the way the minister would inform people like Poitier. He reached out for the second document, addressed to Poitier and from the Minister of Marine. It said, almost word for word, what Poitier had related - that he was to take his force to Candia.

Poitier had been honest. Ramage slid the documents back into the pile. "I have to leave this cabin for a few minutes." He walked over to the door of the quarter gallery to starboard and pushed it open before going out through the main door, acknowledging the sentry's salute.

Egypt, he thought; Bonaparte must be off his head. At any rate, the drunken artillery colonel need no longer worry about sand.

As Ramage climbed the companionway he remembered bitterly what the French major had known in the prison cell at Orbetello: that information was only valuable if it could be passed on to someone in a position to make use of it. By a combination of luck and blackmail, he had discovered that the French were, at least until a few days ago, assembling a fleet and an army to invade Egypt. The only way he could warn the Admiralty was to sail the Calypso a thousand miles to Gibraltar, and that involved abandoning the most potentially exciting orders he had ever received. The alternative was to send one of the bomb ketches with the news. But it would take weeks to get there ... He admitted that the Admiralty would be justified in bringing him to trial for allowing such delay. . .