"But Citizen . . . Citizen, she is a French frigate! I recognize the class!"

"She was, until the British captured her in the West Indies. She is now the Calypso, one of His Britannic Majesty's frigates."

"But... but... I can't believe it!"

"I commanded the ship that captured her, but just go up on deck with this Marine sentry. If you don't believe the evidence of our colours, you are free to speak to any man you see."

Renouf heard the Captain give a quick order to the man, who took him by the arm after stuffing the pistol back in his belt, and led him out through the door and up the companionway. On deck the sun was just warming the planking and Renouf glanced aft, by now knowing what he would see. There were the British colours, the cloth barely moving in the early morning breeze. He looked across at each bomb ketch in turn and saw that they had not noticed the colours. The fools! Then he realized that although the frigate's port lids were not triced up, all the frigate's guns were manned. One broadside would destroy the Fructidor, the other broadside would reduce the Brutus to kindling.

This aristo of the Royal Navy had brought the Calypso into the bay in the darkness, anchored so that his ship was perfectly positioned between the two ketches, and then patiently waited for the Frenchmen to wake up. Renouf suddenly felt cold as he turned and walked back down to the cabin, followed by the sentry. This captain was a cool one. He must have confidence and a droll sense of humour. But if he intended to kill them all, obviously he would have fired broadsides at first light. Then, as Renouf went back to his chair and sat down again and looked up at the Englishman, he was not so sure.

He suddenly remembered why the name Ramage had seemed vaguely familiar. He had been thinking that he knew it from some French circumstance, but now he remembered the Royal Navy captain who had started off by rescuing that Italian woman aristo from somewhere close to here, and later in the West Indies had completely destroyed the convoy intended to relieve Fort de France, in Martinique.

Now it was coming back to him like a flood tide: that was where Ramage had captured this very frigate. Four frigates had been escorting the convoy and Ramage sank two and captured two. The cabin began to move in the most curious way, as though it was swaying, and then it went blurred, as though he was looking at it under water, and then night suddenly fell.

"Sentry!" Ramage called, "this blessed Frenchman's just fainted. Get him out of here."

Ramage walked round the Dix-Huit de Fructidor with Aitken and was impressed by what he saw. The ketch was about sixty feet long, with both masts set well aft. The mainmast was almost amidships, the mizenmast halfway between it and the taffrail. Just forward of each mast, though, there was a circular hatchway, looking like an enormous cartwheel lying flat on the deck and inset several inches. On top of this, instead of spokes and an axle, there was a thick circular wooden disc, or bed, and on this bed was mounted a large mortar. The circular bed revolved on the hatchway, or wheel, so that the mortar could be trained all round the compass.

In fact great care had to be taken to make sure that a mortar shell did not damage any rigging or the masts, so that effectively each could be trained through about 130 degrees on either side - from twenty degrees ahead to 150 degrees on the quarter. Then neither the mortar shell itself nor the muzzle flash would do any damage.

Aitken pointed at the bed on which the mortar revolved. "They must turn it with handspikes when they want to train it round."

Ramage saw that the bed was constructed differently from the usual type built into a British bomb ketch because the French constructors had to adapt the already-completed hull of a merchant ship. Ramage looked at the paint on the woodwork and said: "It's more likely that they lock the mortar on a bearing, probably forty-five degrees, and then to train it they turn the whole ship by putting a spring on the cable. That would be a more accurate way of aiming the gun. I wonder if this one has ever been fired in anger?"

The first lieutenant shook his head doubtfully. "I can't remember ever hearing of the French using bomb ketches - not in this way, anyway. This would be the first time. Interesting things, aren't they, sir?" he commented. "Must be the very devil to elevate a mortar accurately."

"You don't. It's like hitting a ball with a stick. You can hit it hard from underneath so that it goes high in the air but no great distance, or you can hit it on the side so it flies lower and flatter but covers the same horizontal distance. In each case you usually correct your aim with the second shot. It's the same with a mortar. You train the gun in the right direction with the spring on the cable - at a fort, for instance. Then, with the barrel pointing on the bearing of the fort you have to hurl the shell over the walls and into the middle. You do that by increasing or decreasing the amount of powder used to launch the shell. Like a child's peashooter, in fact. A boy points the peashooter in the general direction of his target and controls the parabola of the pea by blowing harder or softer."

"So the most important items on board a bomb ketch are a good telescope to spot the fall of the shell and a large scoop to measure the powder," Aitken said with a grin. "As we have a bring-'em-near and scoops to spare it seems a pity that we have to scuttle these two vessels, sir."

"It does," Ramage said thoughtfully, "but a bomb ketch's drawback is that it's not much use for anything else. These two go to windward like haystacks. They'd never keep us in sight for more than six hours, let alone stay in company, and we have a long way to go."

Still, it shocked Aitken's thrifty soul to scuttle or burn two well-built ships. There was no chance of treating them as prizes - with Malta in French hands the nearest prize court was in Gibraltar, a thousand miles away, and both vessels would be recaptured long before reaching it because the Mediterranean was now swarming with French and Spanish ships.

" 'Tis a pity we can't use them to bombard somewhere," Aitken said almost fretfully. "Anyway, could we not have some practice, sir? I've never seen one o' these shells burst. I think it's knowledge I ought to have," he added hopefully. "And the men, too."

"It's knowledge you ought to have already," Ramage said with mock severity, having served in a bomb ketch for a brief three months when a young midshipman, although she had never fired a shot.

"I know, sir," Aitken said contritely. "I was hoping that. . ."

"You're like a child with a new toy," Ramage said amiably, going to the ship's side and gesturing to Aitken to climb down into the waiting cutter so that they could return to the Calypso. One of the few advantages of being the senior officer was that you were the last to enter and the first to leave a boat, and as he had always been impatient, he welcomed promotion.

Back in his cabin and sprawled in the one comfortable chair, his sword and hat tossed on the settee, Ramage quietly and amiably cursed Aitken. The Scot was a fine seaman, extremely brave, with a whimsical sense of humour and an extraordinary devotion to Ramage which had recently led him to decline the command of a frigate (and thus promotion to the post list) so that he could stay as the first lieutenant of the Calypso. But this product of Perth - of Dunkeld, anyway, which was just to the north, alongside the Tay - had unintentionally jabbed a finger on a tender spot.

Since he had ordered the Marine sentry to drag Renouf away after he had fainted, Ramage had been trying to make up his mind about the two bomb ketches. Having read the French orders, he now knew what they were supposed to be doing, and all the Frenchmen were on board the Calypso, guarded by Marines. Even the Brutus'scommanding officer had eventually been sobered up with the help of several buckets of sea water hurled by a couple of gleeful British seamen.