Ramage looked through his telescope. Each hut could accommodate at least a dozen men. What size would the garrison be? Three men were needed to pass a signal, so a signal watch would comprise three men. They would be on duty only during daylight, which in summer lasted about sixteen hours. Four hours on and four off meant two watches a day for six men. Plus a cook. Plus sentries - two on duty at any one time throughout the twenty-four hours. Two hours on and six off. Eight men.

The province's Army commander would hardly have welcomed the setting up of the semaphore stations if each one needed six signalmen, eight infantrymen and a cook. And knowing how expert were soldiers (and sailors, too!) in getting authorization to have the largest complement to do the least work, there'd be a lieutenant as the commanding officer, a quartermaster and probably even a carpenter and his mate to do repairs when an extra strong gust from a mistral or Levanter blew out some panels of the semaphore shutters. At least nineteen or twenty men; more counting sergeants and corporals. It seemed absurd but, to be fair, a soldier would never understand why the official complement of the Calypso, a 32-gun frigate, was 230 men - not that she was ever lucky enough to have that many, in the same way that any battalion was usually short of men.

Ramage looked up to find Southwick watching him, his chubby, suntanned face wrinkled in an unspoken question. The old man had taken off his hat, and his white hair, in need of a trim and soaked with perspiration, looked like a new mop just dipped in a bucket of water and shaken. Aitken had closed his telescope and was waiting too. Rennick, the Marine lieutenant, had joined them, anxious not to miss anything.

In the meantime the Calypso was stretching along to the westward, a few miles short of the little town of Foix, flying French colours as a legitimate ruse de guerre, and Captain the Lord Ramage had, in a lead-weighted canvas pouch in the drawer of his desk, written orders from the Admiralty suitable for one of the few King's ships (if not the only one) left in the Mediterranean, and certainly the sort of orders that one of the most junior on the list of post captains dreamed about.

'What now, sir?' Southwick finally asked. He had served with Ramage for four or five years, was old enough to be his father, and had been in action with him a couple of dozen times, regarding fate as being unfair because while Captain Ramage had been wounded four or five times so far, Southwick had not received a scratch.

'What now, Mr Southwick? Why, we just sail past, dipping our colours politely if the signal station salutes us. I trust you have a lookout watching particularly in case they extend that courtesy, and a man at the halyard?'

Ramage turned away to hide a smile as Southwick's face fell and the old man, utterly dumbfounded, glanced questioningly at Aitken and Rennick. Ramage went below to find his cabin reasonably cool - more than anywhere else it benefited from the quarterdeck awning - and unlocked the bottom drawer.

He took out a canvas pouch, along the bottom of which was sewn a thick strip of lead, heavy enough to sink it if it was thrown over the side in an emergency, and which was held closed like an old woman's purse by a heavy line passing through grommets. He undid the knot and slid out a small book, little more substantial than a pamphlet and printed on cheap, greyish paper.

Boldly printed on the front was a bare oval with an anchor in the middle, and the words Liberté on the left and Egalité on the right. Inside the oval and surrounding the anchor was Rep. Fran. Marine. Beneath, in bolder type and also in French, were the words: Secret. The Signal Book for Ships of War, third edition.

Ramage had often used the book since finding it on board a captured French prize a few weeks earlier, and by now knew most of the flag signals by heart. He had been puzzled by a long list of place names in the back, against each of which was a man's name, with no rank hinting that he was, say, a garrison commander. He had recognized several of the places - they were all between Cartagena and Toulon, some six hundred miles of enemy coastline.

Suddenly, when Southwick had named the nearest village a mile or so inland of the tower as Foix, Ramage had finally recognized it as a name on that long list. And here it was, on the next to last page of the book, in very small type, Foix... J-P Louis. So ... that was the answer: the list gave the positions of all the French semaphore stations on the Mediterranean coast and, presumably, the commanding officers.

The list began with Toulon and went westward along the coast in steps of ten or twelve miles to Cartagena, more than sixty numbered place names. Some were of ports or anchorages - Sète, Collioure (that was a tiny fishing village near Perpignan), Port Vendres, Rosas and round to Barcelona - then on through names he did not know (probably of headlands) to Tarragona, Valencia, Alicante and finally Cartagena, Spain's greatest base in the Mediterranean.

Damn, the point of looking at the list was to locate the next tower to the west. Foix was followed in the list by Aspet. He reached up to the rack over his head, selected a rolled-up chart, and took it out, holding it flat with unusual-coloured, flat-sided pebbles which some of the crew had found on a beach and polished so that they looked like egg-sized gems. They were his birthday present from them - handed over with much ceremony two weeks ago. They must have consulted someone like Southwick or Aitken, because few people knew that the captain normally used rough lead castings as weights to hold charts flat.

Aspet... He reached for the dividers, opened them so that one arm rested on Foix and the other on Aspet, and then measured the distance against the latitude scale. Eight miles. It seemed a long way, but that was a tall tower, and very visible with the clear Mediterranean light - and probably they did not use it unless the sun was bright. What about urgent messages on rainy, dull days? In places where the towers were widely spaced, a galloping horse could always bridge a gap, although often the distance by land between two headlands enclosing a large bay was considerable.

He rolled up the chart and put it back in the rack, gathered up the pebbles, and then went up on deck, and from the way Southwick, Aitken and Rennick suddenly stopped talking and looked embarrassed, they had been discussing their captain's extraordinary apparent lack of interest in French semaphore towers.

'Mr Southwick, using your glass as best as you can, and helped by Mr Aitken, who no doubt would get a better view from the mainmasthead, I want as accurate a sketchmap of the headland, tower, buildings round it and its position in relation to the beach each side as the two of you can manage.'

Both the master and first lieutenant gave a grin of relief, obviously anticipating action.

'As you know', Ramage could not resist adding, 'the Admiralty encourages its officers to record unusual sights and views in their logs and journals: "Instructions for the Master", if I remember correctly, says: "He is duly to observe the appearances of coasts; and if he discovers any new shoals or rocks under water, to note them down in his Journal . . ."'

'Aye aye, sir', Aitken said gloomily. 'I'll use this slate', he said to Southwick. 'You'll have to get another one.' With that he took his telescope and the slate and made for the ratlines to begin the long hand-over-hand climb to the maintopmasthead.

While Southwick, who was officer of the deck, alternately picked up his telescope, put it down to mark the slate, then used his quadrant to measure horizontal angles between the tower and huts, and the vertical angle made by the tower, Ramage nodded to Rennick, indicating that he should join him at the taffrail.