He would attack the Frenchman's larboard side. With the wind from the north-west and on this course, it meant that if the Frenchman tried to bolt he would have to turn away to leeward - and the Calypso would be there to stop him.

By now Aitken was back on the quarterdeck, looking with amusement at the white bags covering the larboard after corner of the quarterdeck.

"Looks as though it's done the trick, sir," he commented. "But it's going to be a pounding match once we get alongside."

"Pound her well and then board her. We're short of officers to lead boarding parties."

"Aye, sir: Wagstaffe, Kenton, Martin, Orsini - we could do with them now."

The Furet's hull was entirely black: the only colours were the dull buff paint used on the masts and yards, and the inside of her gunports, which were red: that was traditional. And the name on the transom. The Revolution, Ramage thought, seemed to be against colour. Perhaps if equality was a colour, it was black, while fraternity was buff. The French Navy seemed to have run out of colours when they came to liberty - unless you include the blood red used inside the gunports . . . The Royal Navy issued no more colours than that; but neither did their writing paper have "Liberté" and "Egalité" printed on the top. It was hard to imagine their Lordships in the Admiralty administering a navy with a tree of liberty planted in the forecourt in Whitehall.

He stopped his train of thought for a moment and reached for his telescope. It was curious the amount of water suddenly flowing over the side from the Furet's scuppers and scattering into droplets like smoke as the wind caught it. They must be wetting the decks to put down more sand in anticipation of battle. There was enough heat in the sun to dry the planking very quickly, but one would have thought a few buckets of water slung over them from a tub would be enough: with this amount of water the sand must be sluicing over the side too.

So much water, he thought, putting the telescope to his eye, that they must be using the deckwash pumps. No, it could not be that: both ships were sailing too fast for deckwash pumps to draw, even if lead piping went down the side to the water instead of canvas hose.

Hell fire! The water was not just a spray now; it was running in a stream through the lee side scuppers - in spurts, rather, like blood pulsing when a man lost a leg. The Calypso's pump dale was also on the lee side, a wooden trough which carried the bilge water over the side from the great chain pump.

It must be the chain pump. He pictured many men turning the big cranked handle to rotate the sprocket wheel which turned the endless chain and brought each leather disk up the pipe casing with its quota of water, emptying it into the trough of the pump dale as it came over the top and started its downward journey again.

Then he cursed himself for his stupidity: the French captain was trying to lighten his ship in just the way Ramage himself had considered starting fresh-water casks, throwing a few guns over the side and jettisoning a couple of the boats. Very sensibly the French captain had decided to sacrifice the fresh water, so that now there were thousands of gallons of water in the Furet's bilge which his men were busy pumping out. The Calypso's bilges were pumped every morning, on Ramage's orders; not because she had a leak but because water left in the bilge soon began to stink. He had been in some ships of the line commanded by men who should know better whose bilges smelled like the Fleet Ditch at a midsummer noon. Anyway the chain pump leathers wanted wetting daily if they were not to dry and crack.

Southwick looked round at him and nodded cheerfully. His latest reading with the quadrant showed the Calypso still gaining. "That ship is about five hundred yards ahead of us - from our jibboom to his taffrail, sir."

"It's still going to take a long time to make up that distance," Ramage said gloomily. "Half an hour, anyway. Still, the men can have their dinner; it's long overdue."

It was as if the Furet was towing the Calypso, Ramage thought irritably; despite his recent gain, the distance hardly changed now - not perceptibly, anyway; just two identical frigates surging southwards with a quartering wind, one flying the Tricolour, the other British colours. The Calypso was by far the smarter, Ramage thought; but paint did not make a ship fast nor did scrubbed decks stop barnacles and weeds growing on the bottom. No doubt the copper sheathing was by now wafer-thin in places, no longer keeping the growth away, and it was equally certain that many thin sheets would have ripped off, leaving only the stubby sheathing nails sticking out like the heads of pins pressed into a pin cushion.

He would give anything to see the face of the Furet's captain, just to know what the man looked like. The Frenchman knew his business, that much was certain. Ramage would bet that the fellow had learned his profession under the old navy and, having no aristocratic attachments (and no enemies to accuse him falsely), had received well-merited promotion. Ramage felt that if he could catch a glimpse of the man's face he might be able to guess what his next move was likely to be, like a prizefighter watching his opponent's eyes for a warning of the next punch.

He lifted his telescope and saw the three heads facing aft at the taffrail, obviously watching the Calypso racing along in the Furet's wake. In the Tropics one would expect to see flying fish making their graceful waltzes over the wavetops, but they were nearly twenty degrees too far north . . .

Suddenly men were climbing up the Furet's starboard shrouds, going to the stunsail booms at the ends of the yards. Perhaps the French captain knew a trick to make them draw better. Curious that so much water was still pouring through the scuppers on the lee side - the men working the pumps must be getting tired.

"How long ago did you take the next to last altitude?" he asked Southwick, who consulted his slate and then looked at his watch.

"Seven minutes, sir. I've been taking one every four minutes."

He had first noticed the pumps going just before Southwick took that sight. Say eight minutes. That was a long time to have the men pumping at that rate, because there was no doubt they were making that cranked handle spin, probably with a couple of bosun's mates standing over them with starters . . . Suddenly his thoughts froze as if a highwayman had jabbed him in the stomach with a pistol and demanded: "Your money or your life."

The Furet's pumps were going, and now there were men gathered at the starboard end of each of her yards, about to do something with the stunsails. What trick was that captain up to? No answer, no hint of a reason, came to mind.

"Stand by sheets and braces," he snapped at Aitken, who snatched up the speaking trumpet and bellowed through it, although he was clearly startled by so unexpected an order, which would sacrifice the Calypso's stunsails and booms.

"Stand by at the larboard guns - yes, larboard, blast it!"

Again Aitken bellowed as he repeated the order, while Southwick hurriedly snatched up his quadrant and once again moved the vernier a fraction, noted the time and wrote the figures on the slate. All this Ramage saw only from the corner of his eye because he was watching the Furet through the telescope again.

Suddenly the head of the Furet's maintopgallant stunsail dropped a few feet and then streamed forward along the starboard side, flogging and twisting like the tail of a kite, and a moment later the rest of the stunsails were cut adrift, canvas and rope threshing in unison. She was going to turn suddenly to starboard, Ramage was certain of that and he was going to turn first to cut her off. If he was wrong he would lose a few hundred yards, but he had to gamble.

He shouted the order to Aitken and pointed at the quartermaster. An eight-point turn meant the men had to spin the great wheel several revolutions, and the quartermaster crouched ready over the binnacle, watching the compass and the dogvanes as well as glancing up at the luffs of the sails, which were beginning to flap as they lost the wind, although the yards were already being braced up.