While Southwick sent away the two cutters and pinnace to take off the French from the three remaining merchant ships and the jolly boat rowed over to recall the gig and launch when they left the beach, the bosun's mates hurried through the Calypso sending the men to quarters.

Quickly and quietly they wetted and sanded the decks, put match tubs between the guns, half filling them with water, and set out larger tubs in which the sponges could be soaked when sponging out the guns. The gunner took the large, bronze magazine key from Ramage and went below to begin issuing flintlocks, lanyards, prickers and powder horns to each of the gun captains and be ready to issue cartridges to the powder boys.

Southwick was looking at his watch and cursing.

'We're lucky the dam' French 74 isn't steering for us; I've never known the men to take so long!'

'You must be patient', Ramage murmured, knowing his own reputation as the most impatient man in the ship. 'Don't forget we hardly have a gun captain left on board: nearly all the men are doing someone else's job, and they're not used to it.'

'Aye', Southwick admitted, 'but they've been exercised enough at exchanging jobs.'

'It's not the same. Telling every fourth man he's a casualty and making the rest move round is no good because each replacement sees what the previous man was doing.'

'I hadn't thought of that', Southwick said, and Ramage admitted the thought had only just come to him. In future - if there was a future, with a ship of the line coming into the gulf like the door of a trap closing - he would start all exercise at the great guns by jumbling the men's numbers. Or perhaps just subtracting three, so everyone had to change.

He swung the glass back to the French ship. She was still well outside the gulf and clewing up her main and forecourse, so she would enter the gulf in a leisurely fashion under topsails alone. In this light breeze! If her bottom had the usual crop of barnacles and she was in fact making for Cala Piombo, or even the one to the north of it, she had at least fifteen miles to sail, and she must be making only three or four knots.

All that made sense. If the French captain had never been into the gulf before, he was coming in under the worst possible conditions (barring a gale, of course): running in at night before a west wind meant he was coming up to a lee shore and sailing straight towards a full moon still low on the horizon, so that all the hills and cliffs were shadowy, making it very difficult to judge distances. The land at six miles would look as though it was only three miles away.

In fact, Ramage realized, almost giving an audible sigh of relief, the Calypso herself would be indistinguishable against the shadow of the cliffs and hills behind her, which from the Frenchman's position were higher than her masts. The French 74 would spot some of the merchant ships anchored much farther out, but they would be easily identifiable; just the coasting vessels she would expect to find anchored for the night in a place like the Golfo di Palmas.

With the nightglass Ramage could see the jolly boat, gig and launch returning to the Calypso from the beach and, a moment later, spotted one of the cutters leaving a merchantman. Only one? Then he detected movement beside another merchantman and saw the second cutter leave her and head for the shore. Either the men commanding the cutters were confident or disobedient, because both cutters were supposed to tackle a ship together ... Well, as long as there were no flares or flashes of musketry to attract the attention of the 74, it did not matter. It was, he thought, the sort of thing young Orsini would do - or Martin. Or, he admitted, himself when he was a midshipman or lieutenant.

Southwick now went through what Ramage knew only too well as his disapproving ritual. First he took off his hat and scratched his head; then he ran his fingers through his flowing white hair to straighten it out; then he jammed his hat back on again, rubbed his stomach with a circular motion, as though trying to assist his digestion, and then gave a sharp sniff.

'We cut and run, eh, sir, as soon as she's anchored?'

It was, of course, the only sensible thing to do: they would be able to see the 74 anchoring down at the other end of the gulf and the moment she had an anchor down and was busy furling sails the Calypso would cut her cable - indeed, they could start weighing now if they wanted to avoid losing both anchor and cable - let fall her topsails and courses, and beat out of the gulf, staying as far to the north as possible: shaving between the south end of Sant' Antioco and Isolotto la Vacca. The Frenchman, eight or ten miles to the south, would never catch them...

'Seems a pity, doesn't it?' Ramage said casually, trying to remember the details in Orsini's list of the main cargoes carried by the remaining merchant ships. Aitken had gone off with the six ships carrying the most valuable cargoes; those left here at anchor, and which he had been intending to burn tomorrow, were stowed with mundane things like the poor-quality powder, whose prize value Southwick had just been bemoaning.

Half an hour later Ramage and Southwick finally reached a compromise in the quiet of the cabin, and Ramage admitted that it improved the chances of success. Ramage had first intended using one ship, which he would command, leaving Southwick on board the Calypso.

This had brought an immediate and explosive protest from the master.

'Sir, I'm beginning to think you reckon me too old, or getting too stupid; this job is one for a lieutenant or master, not a post captain. I'm the only officer you have, but...'

'Nonsense', Ramage said, and to smooth Southwick's pride, freely admitted: 'It's not lack of faith in you; I'm just being greedy.'

Southwick had guessed that from the start, but he also knew that a display of injured pride represented his only chance of seeing any action tonight.

'Let me look at the list of cargoes again', Ramage said.

Orsini's writing, never very clear, had been little more than a scribble, done standing up as he talked to each master at Foix.

Most of the eight ships were carrying powder, but only two, the brigs Muscade and the Merle, carried any substantial quantity. The first had more than seventy-five tons on board, the second more than 150.

Ramage tried to picture one of them exploding. Unlike powder in a gun, where the only way the explosive force could go was up the barrel, powder stored in a ship's hold would explode in every direction; there was no way of aiming or channelling it.

It was like prize fighting: if your opponent swayed back when you punched him on his jaw, much of the force of your blow was lost. But if you managed to hold his head with your left hand and then hit him with your right, you might not kill him but would certainly knock him out, because the full force of the blow would be concentrated on a small area. The crowd betting on him might well set about you with stools, bricks and walking canes, but you would have the satisfaction of winning the fight.

He needed exactly that for the attack on the French 74 - a hand holding one side to avoid losing most of the effect of a merchantman exploding on the other.

The answer was, of course, to have a merchant ship exploding on each side at the same moment. And that was how the compromise came about.

'Who will you leave in command of the Calypso, sir?' Southwick asked.

'I've no choice: under the regulations it must be the next senior officer after you, which means the gunner.'

Southwick gave a rumbling laugh that lasted a full minute.

The gunner!' he finally gasped unbelievingly. 'He wouldn't even take responsibility for eight men and a jolly boat, let alone command of one of the prizes in Aitken's convoy. Now he's going to be stuck with the Calypso. Sir', he asked pleadingly, 'may I be the one to tell him?'