Ramage had watched through the telescope as Baker boarded with Jackson, swarming up a rope ladder hanging over the merchant ship's quarter. He had paused on the poop, then walked forward, finally going below. He had emerged briefly to signal Kenton to come on board, and Bowen had gone up the ladder as well as Rennick and his sergeant. Then, as far as Ramage could see, they bad systematically searched the ship's accommodation, although it was dear that the hatches were still battened down, the covers, battens and wedges still in place, showing that no one had been down into the cargo holds.

Half an hour later, with the ship settling so deeply that the was becoming unstable, liable to capsize unexpectedly, Ramage had fired a gun to signal the boats to return, and when they were back on board Baker, Kenton, Rennick and Bowen had come to the quarterdeck to report, all of them white - faced and obviously distressed at what they had seen.

'You saw the name on the stern, sir, the Tranquil of London, but there are no ship's papers on board. The captain's cabin, has been looted, his desk smashed up, every drawer emptied out,' Baker said.

He held up a bundle of papers. 'We shall be able to identify most of the bodies of the passengers from these letters, sir, and some of the crew too, I expect. There were some packages addressed to people in Jamaica. They're in the boat and I'll have them brought up.'

Ramage knew he was trying to avoid asking the question just as Baker was avoiding referring to it, but finally he said: 'How many?'

'Fifteen in the ship's company, sir, and nine passengers, five of them women."

'All dead?'

Three were still alive when I found them. One died before Bowen could get on board, and the others - both women - died before he could do anything. The women were raped and then shot or butchered. But the strange thing is none of them seem to have tried to run away.'

'Could they have been standing there, expecting to be taken over to the schooner as prisoners, but suddenly murdered by their guards?' Ramage asked.

Baker nodded miserably. 'I think that's what must have happened. When the privateer sighted us, sir?'

'Yes. The boarding party were probably about to secure the prisoners - or perhaps choosing those likely to be worth ransoming - and preparing to put a prize crew on board and get under way just as we came in sight.'

If I'd waited another hour before tacking, Ramage told himself, the privateer would never have seen us. Working beyond the rim of the horizon, she would have sent her prize off, and those people would still be alive, even though prisoners. As it was, there had been a senseless massacre. The ship was sinking anyway, scuttled with her boats still secured, so why kill everyone? Why not let them take their chance in the boats? It would have cost the privateer nothing. "The quality of mercy . . .' 'Why was she sinking?' 'She carried two 6 - pounders,' Baker said. 'Little more than boat guns, but the privateersman trained one down the com - panionway and fired a shot through the bottom.' 'And there's no indication of the name of the privateer?' 'No, sir, but she was French,' Baker said, motioning to Kenton, who opened the drawstring of a canvas bag and pulled out a handful of blue, white and red cloth. They had this flag ready to bend on her, but they left it behind in the rush.' For a moment Ramage pictured the scene: women screaming as pistols and muskets fired, men begging for mercy as cutlasses slashed at them, and somewhere there, watching, the man who had ordered it all: the privateer captain who was not content with leaving all these people to take their chance in a sinking ship. No, he wanted the satisfaction of murdering them, twenty - four murders which did not put another penny in his pocket nor make his life any safer, because none of the victims could possibly have known his name. Kenton held the hoist of the flag so the doth unrolled like a sheet. He looked up at Ramage. 'It was a terrible sight, sir. Not like battle, where you expect to see bodies and men badly wounded. It was like a slaughterhouse.' Ramage took the bundle of papers from Baker, and knew that for the next few hours he would have to read through many private letters, so that he could identify as many victims as possible. It was nothing compared with what the young lieutenants had just gone through. As Kenton had said, it wasn't like battle. Yet war wasn't made up only of battles, which was why he had sent these youngsters over to the merchant ship. Southwick, Aitken, Wagstaffe . . . they might not have seen this sort of thing before although they expected it, but for Baker and Kenton and probably Rennick, it was a side of war of which they had not yet even dreamed. And Ramage knew that in future they would understand if the captain of the ship in which they were serving refused to show any mercy towards a privateer or privateersmen. 'Look,' Southwick suddenly called, there she goes.' Air trapped in the merchant ship's hull was bunting the hatches, hurling up the planks in showers of spray as canvas covers, battens and wedges tore free. Sacks and crates floated sway as the ship began to heel, yards slewing and dropping as the lifts broke. She heeled towards the Calypso and for a minute they were all looking down on her, a gull's eye view, and then she capsized, fat - bilged and ungainly. The bottom was greenish - brown from the copper sheathing, but here and there small, rectangular black patches showed where sheets of the copper had ripped off. There was a swirling in the water, as though a great whale was submerging, and then she was gone, a few air bubbles making the floating wreckage, planks and sacks, bob and twist Ramage looked towards the eastern horizon. The privateer was now a mere speck several miles to windward, an anonymous killer sneaking into the haze. Astern La Creole was lying hove - to and like the Calypso her gun ports were open. Chasing the privateer was a waste of time; she would vanish IB the night long before the Calypso or La Creole could ever get close.

Aitken looked questioningly at Ramage, who nodded, and a few moments later the men were bracing round the foretop - sail yard while others unscrewed the locks from the guns and coiled up the trigger lines. Cartridges were returned to the magazine, cutlasses and pistols put back in chests. The sand bad been washed from the decks and the hot sun had dried the wood in two or three minutes. Ten minutes later the Calypso's off - watch men were back doing whatever they had been doing when the privateer and her victim had been sighted.

Ramage took one last look round the horizon and went down to his cabin with the handful of papers. It was cool and dark, and he was thankful to be out of the glare of the sun. Watching the funeral of a ship and twenty - four innocent people left him feeling shaky. Should he have read a funeral service as the Tranquil sank? He had not thought of it, because he preferred to mourn in his own way, in a quiet and dark place. He hated the pomp and ritual of church funerals, but he knew the ship's company were great sticklers for ritual. Not for ritual, perhaps, but for 'doing the right thing'. They had a healthy attitude towards the death of one of their shipmates, and their wish to give him what they called a 'proper funeral' was perhaps more because they wanted to please him; to give him the kind of funeral they thought he would like which in turn, Ramage supposed, meant die kind of funeral each man wanted for himself: a time when everyone, from the youngest boy on board to the captain, paid their respects. The people represented by the handful of papers now on his desk had not been given a farewell wave. Yet he was sure that no one else had thought of it: Southwick would have been the first to whisper a hint; Jackson had heard Baker's report, and he had said nothing, and the American was not one for keeping his thoughts to himself if the captain's reputation was at stake. No, those who knew what that sinking ship contained had been too shocked to think of anything, and the Tranquil had gone down on her own with a quiet dignity and taken her people with her.