"Will we make it, sir?" Aitken muttered, doubt obvious in his tone.

"We might," Ramage said shortly. He was heading the Calypso for the invisible point where the French frigate would probably turn away to starboard to begin her run clear of the whole harbour and the point where she would fire her larboard broadside into the Fructidor.

The Calypso had two choices: Ramage could either bear away or round up short of the Frenchmen, firing a broadside at her and hoping to scare her captain into turning away prematurely, or he could stay on his present course and try to ram or to get alongside the Frenchman. In any case the penalty for being a few moments late would be seeing the Fructidor destroyed. He tried to think of it as just the destruction of a bomb ketch, deliberately trying to keep the picture of young Paolo, Jackson, Rossi, Stafford and young Kenton from his mind . . . why in God's name had he ever let them all serve in the same ship? They were part of his own life. Now the Calypso and the French frigate were in a dreadful race, one to save and one to destroy them.

"We stand a chance," Southwick said, giving a sniff that betrayed his own doubt. "We could try a ranging shot with the bow-chase guns ..."

Ramage shook his head. "A waste of time, and we don't want smoke obstructing our view."

The Calypso's bow wave was hissing and the men at the guns, coloured strips of cloth bound round their heads to stop the perspiration running into their eyes, were beginning to cheer as they scrambled up on to the guns for a better view of the desperate rush to rescue the little bomb ketch.

They began to cheer and shout defiance and dreadful threats at the French frigate, and Ramage guessed that at least the Fructidor would hear the voices carried across the water by the wind. That might be a tiny grain of comfort for the little group of men watching the French frigate bearing down on them and waiting for the turn away which would bring all her guns to bear.

"She has a hundred-yard lead on us," Southwick said bitterly. "She'll just get across our bow, turn and fire and then bolt before we get there ..."

"Why's he risking it?" Aitken asked, obviously puzzled. "Just to sink a bomb ketch!"

"Revenge," Southwick said promptly.

Ramage pointed towards Isolotto. "He has to come out this far before he can turn away - he daren't try to pass between Isolotto and the shore, and the Fructidor's unlucky enough to be anchored just where he turns ..."

Ramage bent over the compass again and once more called out a slight alteration of course. The Frenchman was not increasing speed; it was just. . .

"He has a hundred yards' lead," Southwick said again, this time his voice angry. "That's all."

"Less," Ramage said quietly. "I estimate less than two ship's lengths. He'll be able to fire as he bears away, and by the time he's on his new course we'll be about seventy-five yards astern of him, just sitting in his wake, and only the bow-chasers will bear . . ."

It would all be over in two or three minutes. By now it seemed that every man in the Calypso was screaming threats and defiance at the French, completely ignoring training and discipline. Ramage's only regret was that he could not join in. The French frigate's hull was becoming shiny as spray made wet patches on the dull hull to reflect sunlight from the waves. She was slightly grey at the bow, like the muzzle of an old black dog, but it was just dried salt crystals. Her sails had been patched time and time again, but they were all cut well, and properly trimmed: the man commanding her knew his job.

All the guns were loaded: Ramage was sure of that because he could see a face or two at each gunport; men watching and waiting for the target to come into view. He swung his telescope across to the Fructidor. The men were grouped round the mainmast. There was nothing they could do except wait for that dreadful broadside.

The shell that crashed down on to the southernmost of the three frigates, bursting a few moments after missing the main yard and rigging and hitting the ladder leading down to the mainhatch, exploded in a confined space, so that the blast and flame swept through the canvas-and-lathe bulkheads and reached the hanging magazine, breaking the windows that allowed light to shine in from the outside, and flashing across an opened cask of powder from which the gunner and his mate were filling cartridge cases in readiness for the resumed voyage to Crete.

Both men, thankful to be away from the neighing and cursing on deck, wore the regulation felt slippers instead of boots or shoes, so that they would not make any sparks with their feet; both men used copper ladles and the cask was bound and lined with copper, because copper against copper made no sparks.

They knew nothing of the impending attack; the two bomb ketches had been expected, and their arrival had been reported to the frigate's captain, who, after checking that the senior captain's frigate had already sighted them, did nothing more. The only unusual noise that penetrated the magazine had been the occasional terrified neighing of a horse which found itself suddenly swung high into the air from the raft, and occasionally there was the sharp drumming of a horse's hooves on the deck as it kicked out wildly before it could be calmed down after being lowered.

The gunner was a mild-mannered little man, once an artilleryman who had deserted from the royal service and, swept up by the Revolution, had joined the navy, where his knowledge of guns had brought him rapid promotion. He had enjoyed the promotion but not service at sea. His only previous knowledge of water had been watching the Loire flow past his little home at Tours, on the Quai d'Orleans almost opposite the Ile Aucard, just where the ferrymen came alongside the rickety wooden jetty, usually drunk and always cursing - not at anything in particular, but because the Loire flowed strongly on its way down to Angers and Nantes, before emptying into the Atlantic. In fact the Atlantic was usually the target of the ferryman's curses; the Loire, he complained, was always in too much of a hurry to get swallowed up by the Atlantic.

The shell which exploded blasted through the bulkheads with the result that in a fraction of a second the half-opened cask of powder went up and sent off the rest of the magazine, nine tons of powder. Not all of it was meant for the ship; five tons were for the flagship which they were due to meet in Crete, and one ton was for the garrison. They were due to embark another ton which the artillerymen were supposed to be bringing with them; in fact, it was the knowledge that more casks of powder were due later in the day that had made the gunner call his mate to help fill some cartridge cases: the arrival of more casks would so restrict the room in the magazine that the work would be twice as difficult.

The shell was the third fired by the Fructidor. Although Ramage thought she had fired without interruption, Kenton had watched the fall of the first shell from the forward mortar and even as Jackson and Stafford were touching their linstocks to the powder at the after mortar and Rossi was beginning to swab out the forward one, Kenton had ordered the spring to be slackened away two fathoms.

This meant that when the mortar next fired the shell burst a few feet more to the south. The first shell had burst to the north of the frigate which was now heading for her; the correction made by Kenton had been a little too much - one fathom would have been enough - and the effect was that the shell landed on top of the southern frigate, not the northern one, reducing her magazine to a smoke-filled void into which the gunner and his mate had vanished, The two-fathom correction had, in fact, led to the northern frigate escaping and, in her rush for the open sea, steering to pass close to the Fructidor, to destroy these scoundrels who captured French bomb ketches, sailed and anchored them under French colours, and then suddenly ran up British colours and opened fire.