Inshore, lit up by the moon, Ramage could see the Muscade under way on a parallel course and imagined Southwick looking across to make sure the Merle was all right.

Jackson said quietly: 'It's made Mr Southwick ten years younger, sir.'

'Has it really?' Ramage was startled at the remark because he had been so busy during the last hour on board the Calypso that, although he had been giving orders to Southwick - not many, because they were not necessary - he had not had time to notice his appearance.

'You know how it does, once he knows he's going to be able to get into a fight, sir', Jackson reminded him.

'But this isn't going to be a fight', Ramage said, finding himself puzzled again. 'As I told you all before we left the Calypso, if the French capture us they'll treat the brigs as fireships and hang us all.'

'Yes, sir', Jackson said in the stolid way that seamen had perfected over the centuries when they answered officers who clearly did not understand the situation.

The men at the sheets and braces had the sails properly trimmed, the topmen were down on deck and the axemen were hoisting the headsails. Soon they too were sheeted home, and the only man doing any work on board the Merle was Jackson, who turned the wheel occasionally a spoke one way and then another as he watched the luffs of the sails.

'Harvest moon', Jackson noted laconically, nodding his head to the east, where the full moon was now a golden disc well clear of the hills.

'Yes, the seasons race by. We're getting old, Jackson!'

'I was fighting the British afore you were born, sir', Jackson said dryly.

'If you live to a real ripe old age', Ramage said with affected seriousness, 'you can come and work for me: I'll find you a simple job on the estate - like sawing up the big logs for winter.'

'How many fireplaces would that be, sir?'

'Only a dozen or so, and the kitchens', Ramage said.

'So I can look forward to an interesting and restful old age.'

'Yes', Ramage said, 'we both can. You can vary the length of the logs and I'll measure them. We need to stay alive, that's all.'

'I'll tell Stafford that if he turns up at the gates of Blazey Hall when he's seventy he might get a job, too.'

'As long as he brings his own saw.'

'Perhaps Rossi could start younger', Jackson said, his face expressionless. 'The Marchesa might like to hear him singing and cursing in Italian from time to time.'

Ramage ignored the implication of Jackson's remark, but it started him thinking. Stafford at the age of seventy - that would be in about forty years' time. By then young Lord Ramage would have inherited his father's title and be the ancient and eleventh Earl of Blazey, nearly seventy himself. Who would be the Countess of Blazey? Who would he have married? She might even be a widow by then. Or more likely Lord Ramage would, in the phrase so beloved by lawyers and biographers, have predeceased his father, his head long since knocked off by a roundshot, and the earldom of Blazey, the second oldest in the country, would have become extinct, or been revived and given to some shoddy politician who caught the King's fancy.

He walked aft to throw off the gloomy thoughts, though he felt no embarrassment or irritation: standing on top of 150 tons of gunpowder with fuses leading down into the hold, and steering for an enemy ship of the line, meant that anyone with the slightest imagination could be forgiven for a few passing reflections on mortality. Yet making a habit of reflecting on mortality was a quick way of driving a man to seek answers in the bottle. Anyway, he thought as he glanced down at the still sleeping boatkeeper, it is a glorious warm night with a steady breeze. Jackson's harvest moon, and an unsuspecting enemy just down the coast, with Southwick and the other brig abeam. Aitken and his convoy would by now be well on their way to Gibraltar safe from interference because they were sailing under the French flag ... The Calypso seemed distant, another world. Paolo would have enjoyed being on this expedition, but he was learning more in Aitken's convoy.

Ramage sat down on the breech of one of the two 6-pounder sternchase guns and looked at his watch. Two hours past midnight. The wind might have freshened a little, but the brigs were slow, and if the damned jibs did not stop slatting he would drop them. They had almost a soldier's wind so that for most of the time the headsails were blanketed by the forecourse. He knew he was now getting jumpy; when the slatting of sails irritated him, it was time to relax. He began walking forward to talk to the men.

Stafford and Arry - everyone, including Southwick and Aitken, always referred to him by that name - and the Marine guarding the ends of the fuses were sitting on the deck, their backs against the hatch coaming, and Arry was just finishing some lurid story concerning another man's wife in Scarborough: a woman, it seemed, possessed of inordinate desires and a weary and pliant husband.

'The three of you had better repeat to me what your orders are.'

They looked at each other and Ramage pointed to the Marine, whose style of speaking derived much from the drill sergeants under whom he had served in the past.

'Hupon the horder "Light fuses!" sir - that'll be from you - I 'old the lantern hopen in such a position that William Stafford, hable seaman, and Arry, hordinary seaman, can happly the end of each fuse to the candle flame. I make sure each fuse is burning steady an' when Stafford 'as hassured 'imself as well, we run like 'ell to the boat, which will be halongside the larboard quarter.'

Stafford grunted. 'An' we proceed to row like 'ell out of range an' back to the Calypso.'

'You're sure you've used exactly a foot of fuse in fitting each one into a barrel?' Ramage asked him.

Stafford scrabbled about on the deck and then stood up, proffering a wooden stick with a fork cut in one end. 'It's exactly eleven inches to the cleft, sir; I cut it meself. First I measured orf a foot o' fuse, nipped it with finger and thumb, then used this 'ere fork in the end to 'old a bight of fuse while I pushed it down into the barrel. It takes an inch to fit in the fork. Before I pulled the stick out I pressed the powder down 'ard wiv my fingers, and then once the stick was out I pressed down again, so the fuse is firm in the powder. Then we wound rags round like a bandage to 'old the fuse steady in the centre of the bunghole.'

The Cockney could have answered Ramage's question with a simple 'Yes sir', but the fact that he had been sensible enough to get a stick of the right length and make a fork in the end showed that he was not blindly obeying orders.

'That was a good idea', Ramage said. 'We need explode only one barrel to send off the rest, but with fuses to five barrels we have five insurance policies.'

The three grapnel men were sitting by the foremast on the starboard side, their grapnels swinging and spinning at various heights above them.

'One last check', Ramage said. 'You've slung the grapnels at the right heights, so tell me what you do as we go alongside our French friends.'

'I'm out on the foreyardarm, sir', one man said promptly, 'an' I make sure the grapnels are swinging so they 'ook on.'

'And then?' prompted Ramage.

'Well, that's all, sir.'

'No, it's not, Smith, unless you want 150 tons of powder to blow you over the moon.'

'Oh yes', the seaman said sheepishly, 'as soon as we hear you shout "Abandon ship", or we see the grapnels are securely hooked on, we bolt for the boat, sir.'

'Which will be...?'

'Larboard quarter, sir.'

Ramage went on to find the three axemen, who were chatting with the topmen at the foot of the foremast. Having singled them out, he asked them about their remaining duties.

O'Rorke, who despite his name and the impression it gave of an Irish giant was a small, nimble man from Boston in Lincolnshire, who had first gone to sea as a young boy in the colliers bringing coal from the northern ports down to the Thames, took a pace forward.