He was hot, sticky, tired and depressed. His head ached from the heat of the cabin and his eyes ached from spending all the morning and much of the afternoon in the glaring sun, climbing up and down that damned Diamond Rock like an outcast goat. Suddenly he sat up as a thought struck him: if the Juno was in battle and had sixty-three men and her Captain and Master still alive and unwounded, he would never dream of breaking off the action.

Then he remembered his famous Monday morning lecture to the Juno's officers about preparing against the unexpected. This was a perfect example of what he meant. Put yourself in the place of the senior officers of the French escort, he told himself. If there were three or four frigates, the Frenchman would be the most senior of the captains. If there was a ship of the line, then it would be a very senior captain, if not a rear-admiral.

As the French rounded Pointe des Salines they would be looking for the British ships known to be blockading Fort Royal. They would have been worrying about them for some time; probably ever since they left France. They would not know whether to expect one frigate or four; a ship of the line and three frigates or a carriage and four greys complete with postillions. However, if they saw two manned British frigates they would assume that they were fully manned and ready for action, and would behave accordingly. They would never for a moment expect that neither ship had a third of her proper complement. That, he realized, put the unexpected on his side. And the batteries on the Diamond represented his most powerful surprise.

Aitken needed written orders putting him in command of the Surcouf, but there was no point in giving him additional written orders telling him what to do if the convoy arrived because there were too many possibilities.

He remembered the day some years ago when he was the junior lieutenant of the Sibella frigate. She had been trapped by a French ship of the line off the Italian coast and a flying splinter had knocked him unconscious. He had recovered to find that the captain and the rest of the officers were dead and he was in command. The ship was sinking fast and almost by chance he had found out from the papers in the captain's desk that the Sibella was acting under special orders. That was how he had come to rescue Gianna using an open boat. He had realized then the danger of a commanding officer assuming he was immortal and failing to keep his officers informed about what the ship was supposed to be doing.

Some orders, of course, were extremely secret, but secrecy was rarely vitally important on board a ship, and certainly not now. As soon as Southwick returned from his water-colour expedition he would have Aitken, Lacey, Wagstaffe, Rennick and the Master down here in the cabin. They would go over the chart, discuss the possibilities and, perhaps more important, the three lieutenants would absorb enough of his ideas and attitude to make it all work.

He went to the skylight and called to Orsini, who was on watch, to hoist the signal for La Créole's captain to report on board. Then he returned to the desk and sat down, reaching for the pen and unscrewing the cap of the ink well. Five minutes later he had written and signed Aitken's orders and told his clerk to copy them into the Order Book. The Navy stayed afloat on a sea of. ink; if only they could sink the French by firing broadsides of quill pens . . . The only consolation was that the French Ministry of Marine's appetite for forms, surveys, lists, dispatches, copies of letters, orders, logs and muster tables was probably as voracious as that of the Admiralty and the Navy Board. The capture of the Diamond would eventually result in a pile of papers in those two offices quite as high as the Rock itself ...

He went up to the quarterdeck for a walk in the fresh air, hoping to get rid of his headache. The sun was low now and he saw La Créole approaching. Wagstaffe had obviously seen the signal flying from the Juno.

As he walked the deck the words 'so few men' echoed with every step. Was he overestimating the effectiveness of the Juno and Ramage batteries against French ships trying to pass? Three 12-pounders could not keep up a fast rate of fire, however eager and well-trained the men. It would be plunging fire and thus much more effective, but that in turn required more accuracy. Firing from sea level meant that a shot falling short of the target would ricochet onwards and might hit, but a roundshot curving down from the height of those two batteries could ricochet in almost any direction.

He stopped walking and stared across the Fours Channel. It was a mile wide and French ships passing through it would be within range of the two batteries for a distance of perhaps a mile and a half. If they were making six knots they would be within range for about fifteen minutes - not long enough. If there were five merchantmen it gave the Juno and Ramage battery gunners three minutes for each ship in theory but they would not change target like that: they would concentrate on one ship, and continue firing until she was disabled.

They must keep the merchantmen inside the segment of the invisible circle representing the Juno and Ramage batteries' range for longer than five minutes. Ideas came slowly to his weary brain as he began striding the deck again. Knowing himself, he did not try to force them. They would come in their own good time.

The schooner was rounding up now and anchoring, and he saw the jolly boat returning from the Diamond with Southwick's rotund figure in the sternsheets. This was his squadron: a former privateer schooner, a captured French frigate and the Juno frigate, with the Diamond batteries watching over them all. Here were all his guns and all his men. He had assembled his entire force. If only he could do - what?

Concentration! Somehow he must lure the French convoy and its escort into the Fours Channel and then use the Juno to block one end and the Surcouf to close the other, with La Créole darting in among the merchantmen, helping to create as much confusion as possible. With them all concentrated and confused, roundshot would start plunging down on them unexpectedly from the Diamond batteries. The masters of the French merchant ships would panic. Some would wear round and try and beat back through the Channel the way they came; others might try to carry on through. The French escorts would attempt to fight off the Surcouf and Juno, but in the meantime some of the merchantmen might collide with each other, drifting with yards locked, bowsprits and jibbooms caught in shrouds. Slowly drifting merchantmen would be perfect targets for the Diamond batteries.

His elation vanished as quickly as it had arrived. It was a splendid dream and no more because the French would never be lured into such a trap. It was eleven miles from Pointe des Salines to the Diamond and that would take the merchantmen a couple of hours to cover. This, in turn, meant that the French escorts had two hours in which to drive off the British ships. Drive them off, perhaps try to board and capture them, but certainly divert the convoy from the Fours Channel.

The French would not let themselves get trapped - unless they did not know the trap was there until the moment Ramage decided to spring it. His advantage was that he held the Diamond but the French convoy did not know it. It could act as a signal station as well as a battery.

He tried to control his growing optimism in case he had forgotten some obvious drawback. Again he put himself in the position of the senior officer of the French escort. Rounding Pointe des Salines he would only be able to see to the northward as far as the headland of Diamond Hill. He would not see two frigates waiting just round the corner, in Petite Anse d'Arlet, the second bay beyond the Diamond Hill headland.

Petite Anse d'Arlet would serve the purpose: it was just two and a half miles north of the headland of Diamond Hill and the same distance from the exit of the Fours Channel. But if the Juno and the Surcouf, waiting in Petite Anse d'Arlet, could not see the Diamond they would be as blind as the French.