The Ramage Touch

CHAPTER ONE

When Ramage eventually succeeded in focusing the nightglass on the two distant ships, because it showed an inverted image they were faintly outlined against the stars and looked like bats hanging side by side and upside down from a beam.

Southwick and Aitken stood beside him at the quarterdeck rail attempting to conceal their impatience. The vessels had been spotted ten minutes earlier by a masthead lookout, who had seen them momentarily against a rising star. The master was the first to give up trying. "Frigates, are they, sir?"

"No."

"Nor ships of the line ?" Southwick's voice indicated more hopefulness than fear, even though the Calypso herself was only a frigate.

"No," Ramage said sarcastically, although secretly amused at the old man's pugnacious attitude, which was obviously under a strain because they had been back in the Mediterranean for several days now without firing a gun, except at exercise. "As soon as I identify them, I'll tell you. Or you can take this -" he offered the nightglass, which was the only one left in the ship because the other had been broken within hours of leaving Gibraltar, "and go aloft to look for yourself."

Southwick patted his paunch and grinned in the darkness. "I'll wait, sir. Sorry, but it makes me impatient . . ."

"Don't get too excited," Ramage warned. "Although they're damn'd odd looking ships they're small. And they're steering in for the coast."

"You mean we won't catch 'em before they reach it, sir?"

"Not with this whiffling wind. Either they've spotted us and are going to run up on the beach and set themselves on fire because they can't escape, or they haven't and, because they can't make headway against wind and current, have decided to edge in and anchor in the lee of Punta Ala. They can stay there until the wind strengthens, or veers more to the north. In fact, I doubt if they've seen us and are waiting for a veer. They must be as sick as we are of tacking in this light southerly."

Ramage looked up at the sails, great rectangles blotting out whole constellations of stars, but there was so little wind that there was only a slight belly in the canvas. For once he was grateful that for the moment there was not enough chilly downdraught to make him turn up the collar of his boatcloak. He could see the quartermaster was dancing from one side of the binnacle to the other, watching the luffs, while the men at the wheel felt the ship almost dead in the water.

Once again Ramage steadied his elbows on the rail and once again held his breath to lessen the movement of the glass as he pressed it to his eye. The eastern horizon was jagged with cliffs and hills, black humps and odd shapes that made up this part of the Tuscan coast. Yes, there they were, tiny, angular black bruises against the night sky. The strangest thing was the position of the masts, although their angle made it certain they were steering in for the north side of Punta Ala ... It was no good straining his eyes any longer: at that moment the ships slid into the dark background of the Tuscan hills as though a door had closed behind them. Ramage put the glass in the binnacle box drawer.

"We'll go in after them," Ramage said briskly, explaining that they were out of sight.

"Shall I send the men to quarters, sir?" Aitken asked eagerly, reaching for the speaking trumpet.

"There's no hurry; it'll take us an hour or more to get within sight of the beach. When is moonrise?"

"Another hour," Southwick said promptly, having just put his watch back in its pocket. "And it'll be a few minutes late by the time it has climbed up from behind those mountains. The - er, those two ships, sir . . ."

"The Devil only knows," Ramage said. "There are so many odd local rigs out here in the Mediterranean, from caiques to xebecs, that I can't even guess in this light. These two look like ketches, except for the masts: they are set so far aft. The mainmast is where you'd expect the foremast to be stepped; the main looks like a mizen. They seem to have tall rigs considering the length of their hulls, and unless the light was playing tricks they have long jibbooms."

"Could they be timber carriers?" It was a sensible question from Southwick because a ship carrying lumber needed long hatches to load decent lengths in the hold.

Ramage shook his head. "Not in the Mediterranean. In the Baltic and North Sea, with long mast timber being moved, yes; but down here the trade is in what the shipwrights call 'short stuff'; larch and the like, and the occasional oak."

"Wine?" Aitken asked, managing to put into the word all the disapproval of a stern Scottish upbringing.

"Neapolitan winecarriers?" Ramage expanded the question, knowing Aitken was a stranger to the Mediterranean. "Or even olive oil? No, I've been thinking of them but they're beamier; they sit squat in the water like Newcastle colliers and don't have a very high rig. In fact I doubt if they could maintain steerage way in this breeze."

"They must be transports of some sort," Southwick grumbled, removing his hat and shaking out his flowing white hair as though spinning a dry mop. "Troops, guns, horses, infantry, powder and shot . . . The French have to supply the garrisons in Italy."

Ramage had already considered salt fish being brought down from Genoa or Leghorn, and military cargoes that could be travelling up and down the coast. He had a vivid picture of the Calypso frigate boarding one French transport and discovering at the last moment that she had five hundred well-trained troops waiting on board, with another five hundred in the consort coming up to the rescue. Likewise a few broadsides fired at close range into a transport laden with casks of gunpowder might well make a very loud bang that none of them would survive to hear for more than a second.

There was only one way of finding out what it was all about. "Allow a knot and a half of northgoing current," he told Southwick, "and give us a course for Punta Ala. If you don't see those ships bursting into flames before moonrise, you can reckon they're just anchored to wait for a wind veer."

Still thinking of the strange shape of the two ships after they had slid into the shadows, Ramage reflected that every country's coast had its own characteristic smell and noise when approached from seaward at night. With experience you can recognize it. The Italian coastline here just south of Elba was just as he remembered it from three or four years ago - but very different from the West Indies he had just left.

Oddly enough there was not so much physical difference in daylight: the high but rounded, breast-shaped Tuscan hills and more distant mountains, scorched brown by the summer drought and with trees only on the lower slopes, were very similar to those of several West Indian islands. Apart from the startling blue of the Caribbean sea and sky, the Virgin Islands, St Christopher, Nevis, St Bartholomew, St Martin and even Guadeloupe and Martinique, could have been part of Tuscany - except, of course, for the noises and smells.

In Italy the carbonaio was always busy cutting thick shrubs and lopping branches from trees and at night he tamped down his ovens with turf so that random draughts did not make too much heat and burn the wood to ash instead of baking it into charcoal. The smoke coming up from the hummocks, like autumn mist starting in a valley, drifted off to leeward with its own distinctive smell: of neither bonfire nor blaze, open grate nor bushfire. When the offshore breeze came up at night in settled weather the smell of the charcoal burning could be detected many miles out to sea, a signpost pointing homeward for the local fishermen but a warning signal to the unwary navigator. Mingling with it but sweeter yet sharper than the charcoal was the smell of herbs: sage, which covered many of the hills, thyme, rosemary and origano.

Among the West Indian islands the effect of the trade winds blowing regularly from the east was that the west side of each island had this almost permanent smell, and it was one which became stronger as you went on shore and entered the little towns: the sellers (usually women) would have their small piles of charcoal under the shade of a big tree. Plump women in colourful but never garish dresses, chattering with each other in shrill voices, occasionally quarrelling but mostly laughing, eager to tease a bargain-hunting buyer who went to a rival.

Ramage shivered in the darkness. Smell, noise - and temperature. If you had been serving on the stormy Channel Station for a few years, a move to the Mediterranean seemed blissful because (apart from a few weeks in midwinter) it was so much warmer. Then you went to the tropics and for the first few weeks the heat seemed stifling, damp and draining off one's energy. Soon you learned tricks like always standing in the shade when the sun was at its zenith, and you discovered the cooling breeze of the trade winds, so that you became accustomed to it. No doubt soldiers on duty inland found it scorching for an hour either side of noon but, to a sailor in a ship anchored in a quiet bay, places like the West Indian islands seemed to have the perfect climate.

The Caribbean climate was perfect, Ramage thought, and there had been no pleasure leaving the tropics this time, particularly because the Calypso was not bound for home. As the frigate sailed north from Tortola, heading for Bermuda, which was one of the first stepping stones across the Atlantic going eastward towards Gibraltar, the temperature had dropped one degree for every degree of latitude made good northward. He had been thankful when they sighted the Azores and began the long final sweep that would take them down into the Gut, as the Strait of Gibraltar was always known to the Navy.

He pulled his boatcloak round him and with another shiver unconnected with temperature realized how a fox must feel as it paused to watch the pack of hounds sniffing the air, seeking its scent, because those two black shapes he had been watching could be a trap. They could be two hens waiting to be snapped up; they could also be two Trojan horses. All he could do was close with them and hope that sharp eyes and the nightglass would give him enough warning. After all, he told himself sharply, that was why he was here, one of the few King's ships now in a Mediterranean from which the Navy, stretched beyond its capacity, had almost completely withdrawn its strength which was needed more urgently from Brest to the Texel, from Jamaica to the Skaw. The Navy's task of blockading the French was like a cooper trying to prevent an old cask from leaking: no sooner was one leak stopped up with a small blockading force than another was spotted.

Of course, that was one of the reasons why Their Lordships m their wisdom had sent off orders from the Admiralty saying that the Calypso was to leave the West Indies "and make the best of her way" to Gibraltar (a time-honoured phrase). At Gibraltar, Ramage had found fresh instructions waiting for him - he was to provision for four months and enter the Mediterranean. The instructions went on in immaculate copperplate for several pages, but boiled down to the fact that Ramage was being sent into the Mediterranean with the Calypso for four months to create as much havoc as he could along the French and Italian coasts, disrupting shipping, transport, communications . . .

Ramage was at first hard put to know why he and the Calypso had been chosen: it was unlikely that Their Lordships were concerned that he spoke French and Italian fluently and sufficient Spanish. Perhaps they remembered that he knew the Italian coast very well - but Their Lordships rarely bothered themselves with such considerations, reckoning that any officer with a decent chart was as well off as someone who had sailed the coast a hundred times. Or - and he guessed this was the real reason - they wanted a former French frigate.

The Calypso was French built, with a distinctive French sheer and the French cut of sails. With French colours hoisted, a French sailor fifty yards away would not know that the British now owned her. She could pass through a French fleet without arousing suspicion; she could sail into a French-held port and anchor and no one would think anything of it, recognizing the cut of her sails. Signals would be no problem because Ramage had recently captured another French ship and secured a copy of the latest French signal book.

Ramage had captured the Calypso frigate, making her present ship's company (most of whom had sailed with him for two or three years and more) comparatively wealthy, thanks to the prize money. It was appropriate therefore that he should command her for this freebooting expedition into the Mediterranean, although Their Lordships would never let any sentimental considerations affect their decision. In fact, he guessed as he held his cloak closer round him, the answer was probably that they could take a frigate away from the commander-in-chief at Jamaica without too much fuss (Admirals always let out a howl of dismay when they lost a frigate) because the Calypso, being a recent capture, was an extra, a consolation prize. If the commander-in-chief grumbled, the Admiralty could quite reasonably reply that he still had the usual number of frigates.

Slowly, as the Calypso steered inshore, a dark headland which he could just make out to the south divided into four sections. The eastern one was Punta Ala itself, and the three smaller were the islets extending westward, as though a giant had rolled three great boulders off the end of the peninsula. The Calypso had sailed in just far enough to reveal the gaps between them.

A figure approached him in the darkness, padding along the deck like a tame bear. He recognized the bulky shape of Southwick, the Calypso's master.

"The islands have just opened up, sir," he said.

"Yes, I saw them."

"The moon should be up in twenty minutes or so. In fact I'm sure I can see a hint of it behind the mountains."

"Yes," Ramage said, lifting his nightglass again. "I can just about make out Monte Amiata over there. It's three or four thousand feet high and must be thirty miles inland of us."

Southwick gave a characteristic sniff. He had various sorts which described different attitudes and each of which, for anyone who knew him well, represented a whole sentence, sometimes a paragraph. Ramage recognized this one as a prelude to a nostalgic remark; even the preliminary to some sentimental reminiscence. Southwick, now well into his sixties, was tending to become more sentimental as the years passed, and a return to somewhere like the Tuscan coast was sure to stir up old memories.

"Deck there! Foremast here!" came a hail from aloft.

"Deck here!" Southwick shouted back, before he had time to make his remark, and Ramage was thankful he had kept a couple of lookouts aloft throughout the night, though it was customary to bring them down at nightfall and station them round the deck with more men, six pairs of eyes searching the darkness for enemy ships (there was little chance of sighting a friendly one) or breakers on a shoreline.

"I think I can make out two ships anchored in the lee of that headland, sir."

"Very well - someone'll be up with a bring-'em-near."

Ramage realized that he was mellowing; a couple of years ago he would have reprimanded a man for the "I think", telling him either he could or he could not.

The master looked round and an American seaman, Thomas Jackson, seemed to materialize from the darkness. Ramage held out the nightglass. "Aloft, m'lad; you know what to look for."

He then murmured to Aitken: "Send the men to quarters - but do it quietly."

The usual beat of drum would carry for miles on a quiet night like this and the regular "Heart of Oak" could hardly be mistaken for a French Revolutionary song.

"Guns run out, sir?"

"No, loaded but don't trice up the port lids."

Ramage was not quite sure why he wanted the port lids left down. A vague idea was lurking in the back of his mind, like a half-remembered dream, so vague that he knew there was no point in trying to hurry it out.

"Quarterdeck - masthead!"

It was Jackson's voice and Southwick answered.

"Two ships, sir: both anchored close inshore, just a few hundred yards from the beach."

"North or south side of the headland?" Ramage asked. The little castle of La Rocchette stood on another small headland to the south and the French might have a garrison there and a few guns. If the ships were lying on the north side of Punta Ala then the headland itself hid them from La Rocchette.

"North side, sir, but I can't make out the type of ships. Two masts, but they're not brigs. The foremast is set so far aft. It may be the way they're lying to the wind," he added doubtfully.

"Very well," Ramage shouted back, "stay up there and report anything else ..."

Round him men were gliding to their places for battle: water was being sluiced over the deck and men sprinkled sand on it in the ritual that would soak any stray grains of gunpowder and prevent men slipping on the deck planking. Gun captains were tightening the two wing nuts securing each flintlock and attaching the trigger lanyards, careful then to coil up the long lines and place them on the breeches of the guns.

Aitken, the Scots first lieutenant, hurried up to ask: "Roundshot, grape or case, sir?"

"Grape in the carronades, roundshot in the rest," Ramage said briefly. It was going to be interesting trying out the carronades; they had only just been fitted in Gibraltar, six 12-pounders with the new, slides that (so the master armourer in the dockyard assured him) made them easier to run in and out and doubled the rate of fire. They certainly looked effective, each sitting on a sliding wooden bed, instead of being fitted on a carriage with wide trucks like small cartwheels. Everyone on board was familiar with the effectiveness of carronades - they were devastating at short range but useless at anything over five hundred yards.

Young boys were hurrying past, clutching the wooden cylinders with close-fitting lids in which were carried the powder cartridges for the guns. They had collected them from the magazine and now each boy would squat along the centreline out of the way behind his gun, waiting for the gun captain to call him.

Meanwhile the quartermaster kept an eye on the two men at the wheel, frequently glancing down at the binnacle window, where a shaded candle lit the compass, and then up at the luffs of the sails. East by south was the course given to Ramage by Southwick, and east by south the man steered, neither knowing nor caring that the Calypso's jibboom now pointed towards places whose names sounded like music or were famous from Roman days and earlier - Vetulonia and Montepescali, Roselle and Vallerona, the mountain named Elmo with Acquapendente beyond it, and the hill town of Orvieto, perhaps the loveliest of them all.

For Ramage the names along the coast had a magic ring, even though he knew them by heart: just beyond La Rocchette was Castiglione della Pescaia, the Portus Traianus of the Romans, and overlooked by a medieval castle with square towers. Then Talamone, then Argentario, almost an island but connected to the mainland by narrow causeways. Beyond the causeways was the old Etruscan town of Ansedonia, now ruined, and close to the Lago di Burano, the lake with the tower beside it, the Torre di Buranaccio.

Neatly spaced all along this coast were the fortified lookout towers watching seaward, built by the Spaniards two centuries ago (mostly by Philip II, who sent the Armada against England); and even now perhaps keeping a lookout for Barbary pirates, Arabs from the northern coast of Africa and still known to the Italians generally as Saraceni. A coast of memories! His own would not be really strong until he was down towards the Torre di Buranaccio, where there was the memory of an enemy musket shot for almost every foot of beach.

In the meantime the downdraught from the mainsail was now chilly on his neck, telling him that the breeze was increasing, and the ship, whose deck had been almost deserted a few minutes ago, was teeming with men, soft-footed and certain in their movements despite the darkness. Watching the topsails and topgallants as black squares stark against the star-spattered sky, Ramage tried to recognize some of the constellations which were now partly obliterated. Orion's Belt was very low in these latitudes; in the West Indies it passed almost overhead.

Aitken came up to report: "The ship's at general quarters, sir; all guns loaded but none run out."

Ramage led him to the binnacle, took the chart from the binnacle drawer, and unrolled enough in front of the candlelit window to show the first lieutenant the stretch of coast ahead of them.

"Jackson reports two ships here - just beyond Punta Ala and behind this second little headland, Punta Hidalgo. You see how the bay then makes a great sweep inland - sandy beach, good bottom? Just the place to anchor and wait for a fair wind."

"Aye, sir," the young Scot agreed. "And it tells us yon ships are even less weatherly than we thought: there's enough breeze come up now for us to make a couple of knots ..."

"I expect these Frenchmen like a good night's sleep at anchor," Ramage said, "and you can't blame 'em for not wanting to tack down this stretch of coast at night. Here -" he pointed with a finger, "you can see this reef between Castiglione and the island of Giglio, the Formiche di Grosseto. They wouldn't want to run into that. Formiche means ants, so you can guess how many rocks there are. And if they reached that far south before the moon rose they'd find it difficult to round Argentario - the mountain is big enough to throw a large wind shadow, and they'd get becalmed in the lee of it. . ."

"So you don't think they've anchored inshore because they're suspicious of us, sir?"

Ramage shook his head. "I don't think they even saw us: don't forget, only our masthead lookouts first sighted them - we never saw a thing from the deck. I doubt if the French keep lookouts aloft at night in whatever vessels they are. If we had frightened them, they'd have anchored here, under the guns of La Rocchette - the castle covers the anchorage on either side of the headland - not off Punta Hidalgo."

There were faint shadows across the deck now and Ramage glanced up from the chart to see the top edge of the moon just peeping up to the east, the hills and mountains of Tuscany making a horizon jagged like torn paper. With the anchored ships and Punta Hidalgo over to the east, they would soon show up well against the moonlight while the Calypso, approaching from the dark west, would not be seen until the last moment. When it was brighter in fifteen minutes or so the golden disc of the moon would make enough light to pick up the Calypso's sails, but what sort of lookout would the French be keeping?

As if reading his thoughts, Aitken said in his soft Highland voice: "We can hope they all had a good tipple of wine before they turned in for the night. With a bit o' luck any lookouts will be stretched out on the hatches, fast asleep."

"If they have lookouts . . . We're probably the only British ship within a thousand miles. They can treat every ship they see as a friend. Of course, that makes it much easier for us - every ship we see is an enemy."

"Deck there!" Jackson hailed, and when Ramage answered he reported: "Now the moon's up I can see both ships anchored abreast of each other, sir, a cable or so between 'em, and a cable from the beach. Can't make out what they are, though; just that the foremast is set well aft. Maybe it gives a bigger forehatch for cargo."

Ramage could just make out the vessels now, so there was no need for Jackson to stay aloft with the nightglass. At general quarters he was usually the quartermaster, watching the men at the wheel, the wind direction and the set of the sails. Ramage called the American down on deck again.

Two enemy ships anchored off the beach and a couple of hundred yards apart . . . Even if they were keeping a lookout, the men would see only a French frigate approaching out of the darkness. The moon would show enough for them to recognize the cut of the sails and the sweep of the sheer. They would have no suspicions.

He looked at the chart to get some idea of the depth in which the ships were anchored and then put it back in the drawer, motioned Aitken to stay and called to Renwick, the Marine lieutenant, who was just inspecting his file of Marines now drawn up at the after end of the quarterdeck. Even in the darkness the difference between the two men was striking: Renwick was stocky, round-faced and bustling. His every movement seemed military, like the jerkiness of a wooden puppet on strings. Aitken was slim and moved quietly - Ramage had no trouble imagining him stalking a deer in the hills of his native Perthshire, moving silently to avoid breaking a twig and always making sure he kept the animal to windward. Or even hanging silently over the bank of the Tay, reaching down into the chilly water to tickle a trout and knowing the water bailiff was close by.

Both Renwick and Aitken were brave men, one a fine soldier and the other a fine seaman. Both had sailed with Ramage for long enough to know that he hated gambling with his men's lives: he would take a chance when necessary but only after reducing the odds as much as possible. Many captains of frigates reckoned promotion depended on the size of the butcher's bill after a successful action - losing a third of their men killed could mean getting a larger and newer frigate, or even a pat on the back from the commander-in-chief.

One good thing about Mr Ramage, Renwick thought to himself, his last year in the West Indies had been quite fantastic - frigates and schooners captured, a whole French convoy seized, the surrender of the Dutch island of Curaçao taken and a Dutch frigate blown up - and all without losing more than about a dozen men killed. Mr Ramage himself had nearly been killed in the Dutch business, though; and the scars of the two other wounds still showed. Apart from those lucky captains capturing an enemy ship carrying bullion, few had made so much prize money as Mr Ramage in so short a time. All the Calypso'sofficers now had enough money put by in the Funds so that when the war ended (if it ever ended and if they survived it) they could retire and live comfortably. Every seaman, marine, petty officer, warrant and commission officer had more money than he had ever dreamed of. Mr Ramage always made sure that the prize agents he chose were honest. All too often one heard of a capture earning a lot of prize money, but when the division was made the prize agent had managed so many "deductions" that he was the only one left satisfied.

The irony was that Mr Ramage was not really interested in prize money for himself. Too many captains (particularly of frigates) thought only of capturing the kind of enemy ships that yielded a good haul in prize money. Renwick had heard of several cases where they had avoided action with French men o' war, preferring to go after the rich merchantmen they were escorting. They were often tacitly encouraged by their commanders-in-chief. The "commander-in-chief upon the station" and his second-in-command took an eighth of the total prize money, so that it was only human nature for an admiral to send his favourite young frigate captains cruising where they were most likely to take the prizes that would increase the wealth of both admiral and captains at no cost to the government. Indeed, both could always claim to be fighting the King's enemies.

At first Mr Ramage had been far from popular with the two commanders-in-chief under whom he had been serving in the Caribbean, at Jamaica and the Leeward Islands. They gave him the unpleasant jobs while sending their favourites after the prizes. But time and time again Mr Ramage had returned to port with rich prizes. It had been luck half the time, good planning the other. The commanders-in-chief had had to put a good face on it because although Mr Ramage was not a favourite, they had their share of the money . . .

Renwick listened carefully as the captain gave him his orders for the Marines. They were straightforward enough, and thank goodness it was going to be almost entirely a Marine action. There was nothing wrong with the Calypso's seamen, of course, but he found it very satisfying for the Marines to be left alone to do a job. With a sergeant, two corporals and thirty-two men, he had a reasonable force; more than enough for the job in hand. The sergeant, a corporal and sixteen men would go in the green cutter; himself, the other corporal and sixteen men in the red. No muskets, Mr Ramage was most emphatic about that, and Renwick had to admit he was probably right: muskets were clumsy weapons and for close-range work a pistol was easier to handle, quite as lethal, and just as accurate in a mêlée.

Aitken was thankful that Renwick had grasped Mr Ramage's plan so quickly, even though the captain seemed to be placing overmuch reliance on the Marines. They were good enough fellows, but he had never met one that was not possessed of three left feet the moment he climbed down into an open boat; and whose uniform was not covered with loops and beckets which caught the triggers or cocks of muskets or pistols and made them fire prematurely, or sent a cutlass clattering on a dark night, so that the enemy was alarmed and all surprise was lost. Brave enough fellows, but for an operation like this one he could not help thinking it was like sending a young bullock along a burn to stalk a wary deer.

At least Mr Ramage's plan was simple; that was the beauty of most of his plans. Double the number of details, Mr Ramage said, and you quadrupled the chance of mistakes. Men became excited going into action, and excited men had bad memories. Aitken had already learned an important lesson - never put a plan down in writing. By all means give written orders, otherwise officers might suspect their captain was trying to avoid responsibility if anything went wrong later, but if the plan was so complicated that its execution required to be written, it was too complicated. All too often the bulk of any plan had to be carried out by seamen and Marines who lacked nothing in courage or initiative but who might not be able to read or write. They acted instinctively; usually they could be relied on to do the sensible thing. But, as Southwick once said emphatically: "Don't stitch up anything fancy."

Ramage told Aitken: "Orsini will command the red cutter and Jackson the green." A moment later he added: "You'd better send Rossi and Stafford in the red cutter, too."

"Yes, sir. Young Orsini's got to get experience, but there's no need for him to take too many risks."

"I'm not concerned with Orsini's personal risks," Ramage said sharply, "but he'll be responsible for eighteen Marines and the ten seamen at the oars."

"Of course, sir," Aitken said hurriedly, knowing Ramage's strict rule that Orsini should receive no favouritism. The Scot knew only too well that the result was very unfair on the lad because Orsini had a far harder time than any other young midshipman. But the nephew and heir to the ruler of the state of Volterra was cheerful, absurdly brave, quite useless at mathematics, apparently a natural seaman, and a favourite with most people on board. Southwick - old enough, as he said on one occasion when trying to din some mathematics into him, to be his great-grandfather - liked him, so did Alberto Rossi, the Genovese, an able seaman who kept his history in Genoa a secret (most people were sure that he had stabbed a man) but whose casual remarks from time to time gave glimpses of a lurid past. The man who had struggled through boyhood in the back streets of Genoa and the fourteen-year-old aristocrat who was the heir to a state, seemed to share the same practical approach to life. Perhaps it was really a practical approach to death.

"Very well, Mr Aitken, we'll heave-to now and have a good look round before we get the cutters hoisted out."

Ten minutes later the Calypso was stopped in the water, her foretopsail and foretopgallant hauled round until the wind blew on the forward side, trying to push her bow one way while the wind on the after sails tried to push her bow round the other. Southwick had trimmed the sails so that the opposing thrusts were equal and the ship, balancing like a pair of scales with similar weights in each pan, sat on the water like a gull so that when the order was given the two cutters could be hoisted out by the stay tackles. Once in the water the boats were led aft and streamed astern, where both crews would wait by the rope ladders which were ready to be rolled down from the taffrail. The boats would be visible from the French ships, but it was not unusual for a frigate to tow a boat or two in reasonably calm water.

"We'll go in closer," Ramage said. "Half a mile."

The moon was rising higher, making an ever-widening silver path to the French ships. Southwick gave the orders for the foreyards to be braced up; the sheets and braces were hauled home - there was very little weight on them - the tacks settled, and the water began chuckling under the Calypso's bow as the frigate gathered way again. On the fo'c'sle a group of men under the bosun were rousing out a cable and preparing an anchor.

As he watched through the nightglass for the moment when one of the two ships would be right in the path of the moonlight, Ramage tried yet again to distinguish the type. Was he taking all this trouble just for a couple of leaky galliots laden with casks of Marsala, or local craft from the Adriatic come round to the Tyrrhenian Sea collecting marble from Carrara, or delivering salt fish from Leghorn, or gunpowder from Toulon? He would know soon enough.

He could hear Aitken giving softly-spoken instructions to Paolo Orsini and Jackson concerning the two cutters, while behind him Renwick gave orders to the Marines in the kind of breathless bark he adopted when the men were on parade. Presumably having them drawn up in two ranks at the after end of the quarterdeck qualified them for the parade ground voice. Four seamen were dragging up a wooden chest of pistols for the Marines, and Aitken was making sure that each of the seamen who would be at the oars also had a pistol in his belt and a cutlass ready to put under the thwart, just in case.

The Calypso was gliding through the dark waters like a marauding shark: in the lee of Punta Ala the sea was almost flat and, now approaching the beach at an angle with the two anchored ships fine on the starboard bow, it seemed as though she was sliding diagonally across a narrow looking-glass reflecting the full moon. There was no sign of movement in either French ship; the sails on their yards were furled untidily and neither showed any lights. The two masters must be asleep by now, not carousing in their cabins.

Southwick ambled up, buckling on his huge meat-cleaver of a sword just as Jackson came out of the darkness and gave Ramage two pistols to tuck in his belt, and a seaman's cutlass. As the captain's coxswain, Jackson knew that Ramage had no time for what he called "fancy swords". If there was going to be hand-to-hand fighting, and the two scars over the captain's right eyebrow (which he rubbed when puzzled or angry) showed he spoke from experience, fancy swords were useless.

Ramage slipped the wide leather band of the cutlass belt diagonally over his shoulder, obeying his own orders that when the ship went to general quarters officers should wear swords and at least one pistol. The quickest way to encourage seamen and petty officers to take short cuts or ignore captain's standing orders was for them to see their captain or officers doing it. It was a typical moonlit Mediterranean night with a gentle breeze turning the sea into hammered pewter. As Ramage looked across the bay, with the Tuscan hills and mountains beyond like petrified waves, it seemed a time for lovers. Instead the Calypsos were within minutes of the time for duplicity and perhaps death. If they were lucky, the duplicity would save lives - their own and the enemy's. Ramage shrugged his shoulders: he knew from bitter experience that a captain becoming too obsessed with saving the lives of his own men could act timidly and ignore one of the most important rules of war - that the boldest move was often the safest.

"About three quarters of a mile to go, sir," Aitken murmured, recognizing that Captain Ramage was absorbed in his own thoughts.

Ramage blinked, looked ahead and lifted his nightglass once again. He made a tiny adjustment in the focus. He was beginning to have a suspicion of what those two ships were, even though they seemed to be hanging upside down, ready at any moment to drop silently into some dark pit.

In the meantime he needed only topsails to manoeuvre: the topgallants could be furled. He gave the order to Aitken and a few moments later topmen were scrambling up the ratlines and out along the topgallant yards high overhead. Sheets and tacks were eased, yards braced to spill the wind, and the quartermaster gave quick orders to the men at the wheel to compensate.

By now the Calypso was sailing along almost parallel to one end of the great semi-lune of beach towards the two ships lying head to wind at anchor, fine on the starboard bow. The wind - still little more than a breeze in here - was broad on the beam, so the frigate could stretch along comfortably. There was plenty of water; the Frenchmen were anchored in at least six fathoms, and there were three and four fathoms to within a hundred yards of the shore.

Then, like a pickpocket leaving a crowd, the idea that had been lurking at the back of his mind, crowded in there but mercifully not lost, managed to slip out. He examined it carefully, as a parson might consider a subject for next Sunday's sermon; he looked across at the anchored ships and the gap between them. He knew the depth of water in which they were anchored; he guessed that by now the Calypso would be in sight of them if they had any lookouts.

Tense at the quarterdeck rail and looking over the whole forward part of the Calypso, he could now see every detail in the moonlight. His men were standing to the guns, with tubs of water between them ready for mops to be soaked, the trigger lanyards were coiled on the breeches like springs, the topsails were drawing well with just enough wind to press them into gentle curves with the silver of the moonlight making the cloth of the sails look white instead of the warm sepia and raw umber of Admiralty flax. The waist was clearer now, with the two cutters which had been stowed there towing astern.

There was only one question, which was how deeply did drunken men sleep, and the answer to that was it depended how deeply they had drunk. He could only guess that French seamen after a few days' beating in light airs would, the moment they were safely anchored in a secure lee like Punta Ala, drink deeply. Anyway, he found his mind was made up, and it meant scrapping entirely his plan and cancelling the orders he had already given. Later he might be accused of risking his men's lives in a joke - that would be if he failed.

He called to Aitken, Renwick and Southwick, explained what he intended trying to do, and after the three men had considered it for a few moments, he knew they liked the idea. From the point of view of discipline it mattered not at all whether they liked it or not, but Ramage had long ago learned that men put their hearts into a plan they liked, whereas only their bodies went into something in which they did not have much confidence.

Southwick, although the oldest of the trio, was always the one who was first to accept some unusual idea, and just as Ramage had guessed, Renwick was the last to see the merits of this one. Hardly surprising, Ramage admitted, since it took whatever glory there might be away from Renwick's Marines ...

The three men left Ramage at the rail and moved about the ship, giving new orders. As he stood there alone, draped in his boatcloak, he listened idly as the bow wave chuckled under the cutwater. It was a chuckling: Ramage could always imagine a group of small boys down there chuckling away at some trick they had played. The ship seemed to be happy at this comfortable progress and wanted to share the fun.

The French vessels were approaching fast, or rather the Calypso was approaching them quickly. No lights, no sudden shouts, no startled challenges - either the Frenchmen were all asleep or it was a well-planned trap. Which was it?

They were asleep, he decided. They were damned odd ships, and all the men were asleep, snoring in that strangled and staccato way of men who had been drunk when they toppled into their hammocks. They seemed to have less than six gun ports a side. Yet dare he risk what Their Lordships would regard as an irresponsible joke if it failed? Always the second thoughts ... It would do the Calypsos good. They had somehow lost the edge they had had in the West Indies. It was not slackness - they still reefed and furled as though an admiral was watching - it was rather that they were slowly losing their zest. There was less skylarking now, fewer jokes, a heavier atmosphere. This was true of their captain, too, Ramage admitted; he too found the Mediterranean chilly and damp after the tropics. The moonlight view over the Calypso's bow was some compensation: the sea and landscape combined looked like a painting by an artist, one of the more imaginative of the early Italians who fully understood that strange and (if you have not seen it) unbelievable Tuscan light and managed to capture it.