"I have a new job - acting as Neptune's Postmaster, I think."

"Ah - so you accepted! Why was Sir Pilcher being so generous?"

Ramage pointed across to the door from the dining-room where two men stood looking out across the terrace. "Here are Southwick and Bowen," he said, waving to attract their attention. "They might as well hear about it at the same time."

Edward Southwick was a stocky man in his early sixties, with flowing white hair and a cherubic pink face. If he was wearing long vestments and holding a crozier in his hand, Ramage thought to himself, he could pass for an amiable bishop calling to exorcize the hotel terrace of jumbies. Certainly no one looking at him now would guess that he was never happier than when leading a boarding party with his enormous meat-cleaver of a sword in his hand - preferably against absurd odds. Ramage had a deep affection for the old man who had been master of each of the two ships Ramage had commanded in the past two years. He treated the seamen like a group of wayward schoolboys, and Ramage with a quiet loyalty that made nothing of the fact that his captain was young enough to be his grandson.

The man with him was perhaps ten years younger, tall with a stoop, but walking with an air of authority. An almost haggard face marked him as recently recovered from a severe illness. It was unlikely that many of the wealthy patients who had once flocked to his fashionable surgery in Wimpole Street would recognize him now. Since they had last seen him, James Bowen had changed from being one of the finest surgeons in London to a pathetic wreck needing a bottle of gin to get him through the day and whose nights were a private hell of drunken fears. Shame had finally driven him to quit his practice and go to sea. A Navy short of surgeons did not quibble about his drinking habits and sent him to the Triton brig, commanded by Lieutenant Ramage and bound for the Caribbean.

But Lieutenant Ramage, responsible for the lives and well-being of a ship's company of seventy-five men and bound for one of the unhealthiest stations in the Navy, was far from pleased that circumstances had brought him a drunken surgeon. With Southwick's help, he had ruthlessly cut off the man's alcohol and systematically nursed him through the horrors of delirium tremens. By the time they arrived in Barbados, Bowen had sworn never to drink again and had proved himself to be a witty and cultured man, as well as a superb chess player. Southwick, instructed by Ramage to play chess with Bowen to keep his mind occupied during the worst part of the cure, had unexpectedly turned out to be a good player.

The two men pulled up rattan chairs and sat opposite Ramage and Yorke.

Ramage gestured at the board and box which Bowen held in his lap. "I didn't mean to interfere with your chess."

"Southwick isn't in the mood, sir."

Ramage looked inquiringly at the Master, who grinned. "He's beaten me six times in the last three evenings, so I'm not sacrificing anything! It's time I got back to sea; this idle life is rotting m' brain!"

To Ramage's surprise, Bowen asked: "No news of a ship yet, sir?"

"Not exactly, but I called you over to hear the news I was just about to give to Mr Yorke."

He saw that Southwick's face had fallen. Like the surgeon, the Master knew that he would not get a ship if it was left to the Commander-in-Chief; their only chance lay in Ramage obtaining a command and asking for them.

"I haven't got a ship, but I've got an appointment. What it'll lead to, I don't yet know."

Quickly and briefly he told the men of the orders he had received from Sir Pilcher, and then described the information from the Deputy Postmaster-General about the lost packets. He purposely told them only the facts of the losses, and when he finished he said: "Well, has anyone a theory?"

Yorke and Southwick both spoke up together, and the Master gestured to Yorke, who said: "I was puzzled by the number of homeward-bound packets that are lost. I'd have expected most of them to have been captured between Antigua and here."

Southwick agreed. "I was going to mention the same thing, sir. Those lost on the way home - were the majority captured on this side of the Atlantic, in mid-ocean, or as they approached the chops of the Channel?"

"The Postmaster doesn't know the positions - the Post Office in London didn't bother to tell him. He seems to think most were taken on this side of the Atlantic - the moment they'd cleared the Windward Passage, to hear him talk - but I doubt it. For one thing, the crews are exchanged too quickly for them to be taken this side, carried to Guadeloupe, sent to France and then exchanged. That alone makes me certain packets are taken towards the end of the voyage."

"It sounds logical," Yorke said, "especially since they are exchanged in - what, about eight weeks, didn't you say?"

Ramage nodded. "It seems amazingly quick to me, but the Postmaster didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about it. Maybe there's some sort of arrangement with the French Government so that the Post Office men get special treatment."

"I can't see us getting a ship out of it," Bowen said gloomily. He turned to Yorke. "Looks as if Southwick and I will be travelling back to England with you."

"I'd better start polishing up my chess," Yorke said. "I have plenty of time, though; the next convoy isn't due to leave for seven or eight weeks..."

The four men sat in silence for several minutes, each engrossed in his thoughts, until finally Southwick said bluntly, "I'll be damned if I see where you start, sir. Seems to me a job for the whole Channel Fleet; can't see what good can be done this side of the Atlantic."

"Ah, Southwick, you're an honest fellow," Yorke said, tapping the Master's knee. "But just think back. The Post Office referred the problem to the Cabinet, and the Cabinet turned it over to the Admiralty. And the Admiralty - I hope I'm not being too unfair to Lord Spencer - were as puzzled about where to start as you. Then they realized that since so many West Indies packets had been lost, they could get rid of the problem by passing it over to the Commander-in-Chief in Jamaica ... Am I right?" he asked Ramage.

Since he had not told them that Lord Spencer had named him especially - as well as passing the whole problem to Sir Pilcher - Ramage contented himself with a suitably cynical laugh and the comment, "I'm sure that's how the Admiral views it!"

But as he sat with the three men, he found himself wondering if the Post Office and the Board of Admiralty had considered the homeward-bound losses significant: Lord Auckland had not mentioned it to Smith: Lord Spencer had made no comment to Sir Pilcher.

"Magic," Yorke said suddenly. "The French are using magicians. Wouldn't surprise me to hear the Ministère de la Marine has had a hot press out for them for the past couple of years."

"Aye," Southwick said, "it must be something like that. It'll be my birthday in a month or so, and since I could have fathered both you young gentlemen I'm not saying how old I'll be. But if you'll forgive me for saying so, sir," he said to Ramage, "this story of the Post Office packets is the weirdest yarn I've heard, an' I've heard a few in my lifetime!"

Yorke was tapping his teeth with a thumbnail. "So the Post Office compensates the owner if a packet is lost," he said, almost to himself.

When Ramage nodded, Yorke commented: "So no underwriters are involved?"

"I doubt it. You know more about marine insurance than I, but I can't see the Government reinsuring on the open market."

"Nor can I; they'd have to pay a pretty premium! And I have a feeling that before paying out underwriters would ask more pointed questions than the Inspector of Packets, who is probably an underpaid quill-pusher who has never been to sea."