The sentry tapped on the door and said quietly, to avoid rousing the occupants of the other cabins, "Mr Yorke, sir."

Ramage glanced up as the door to his left opened in response to his reply.

"Want a game of chess?" he asked mockingly.

"Don't you start," Yorke said wearily. "I've been fighting off Bowen for hours. He seems to think that Southwick standing a watch is a deliberate plot on your part to keep him away from the chessboard."

"I doubt if Southwick minds," Ramage said, getting up from the desk and going to sit in a chair by the table on the other side of the cabin.

"Don't be too sure," Yorke said sitting in a chair beyond. "Your Master is getting the disease. He beat Bowen in three consecutive games just before we left Lisbon."

"Oh? I didn't hear about that!"

"I'm not surprised: Bowen was too startled, and Southwick couldn't believe it himself. I think Bowen was getting careless."

"If you'd like a drink..." Ramage gestured to the locker in which bottles sat in racks.

Yorke shook his head. "No, I want to sleep lightly tonight."

When Ramage raised his eyebrows questioningly, Yorke said: "The packetsmen ... I don't trust that Bosun an inch."

"I imagine he's borne that cross since he was a baby and first reached out of the crib to pick his father's pocket," Ramage said dryly.

Yorke glanced at Ramage's desk, on which there were several sheets of paper, and the open inkwell. "I shouldn't be interrupting you."

"Plenty of time for that: I was starting a draft of my report to the First Lord."

"I saw Much tickling his chin with a quill."

"I've told him to write a report to me, so that I can enclose it."

"He seems to have as much enthusiasm for quill-pushing as you," Yorke commented, picking up one of the two pistols lying on the settee. "I see you don't follow your own instructions, Captain. This isn't loaded! Mine are loaded and ready!"

Ramage pointed to the box on the settee. "There's powder, wads and shot..."

"Armourer - that's the only job I haven't had since I've been with you," Yorke said caustically. "I'd make a good armourer, you know," he confided. "I love guns. Not as instruments to kill" - he snapped the lock a couple of times to check the spark from the flint - "but just for good craftsmanship. Not one of these Sea Service pistols, of course; but a pair of good duelling pistols by someone like Henry Nock."

He took the powder flask, slid back the rammer and methodically loaded the gun.

"I feel the same way," Ramage said. "A gun is inert; just a piece of metal with a flint and some wood attached to it. By itself it can't move or kill anything: it can't do a damned thing unless someone picks it up."

"Ah - an interesting point," Yorke commented, beginning to load the second pistol. "Who is the killer - the gun that fires the shot or the man who squeezes the trigger?"

Ramage sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. "That's a fatuous point which isn't worth mentioning, my friend, let alone discussing. No-" He stopped and listened for a moment. The rudder still creaked as the wheel turned a spoke or two this way or that, keeping the ship on course: he could picture the quartermaster checking by the dim light at the compass and muttering something to the men at the wheel. The lookouts were watching in the darkness, and Southwick would be strolling up and down. He had heard the sentry outside the cabin cough once or twice. A sail occasionally flapped as the packet pitched and momentarily spilled the wind. The hull creaked as all hulls did. He was not sure what he had heard: perhaps only a distant seagull giving a squawk of alarm as it sighted the ship.

"No," he continued, idly taking one of the pistols, while the light from the lantern threw the shadow across the cabin, "just take this as an example. Old ladies and parsons regard them as inventions of the Devil: evil contrivances which kill men. Yet it's the man that's evil, not the gun. A gun is no-"

That noise again, and a slight thump which could have been a piece of wreckage bumping the hull, and from the way Yorke glanced towards the door Ramage knew he'd heard it too. When he raised his eyebrows questioningly Yorke turned down the corners of his mouth, shrugging his shoulders. Then a plank creaked.

There were many beams and planks, lodging knees and hanging knees, frames and stringers creaking in the ship at this very moment, but only one particular plank creaked like that.

A butt in one of the planks in the corridor had sprung close to Ramage's door - he remembered stubbing his toe on it and cursing violently, startling the sentry. And as he stood there, his toes tingling with pain, he had pushed down on the plank and it had creaked: a high-pitched creak - more like the squeak of a loose plank in a staircase than the usual deeper creaking made by the ship, which by comparison was a series of groans. He had intended to have the carpenter's mate put in a couple of fastenings to secure it.

Surely the plank would creak like that only if someone stood on it? But the sentry would see anyone there, unless he was leaning with his right shoulder against the bulkhead, facing to starboard. Still, it could be the sentry himself, or Bowen or Wilson going on deck for some fresh air. Ramage knew he was getting jumpy and leaned over to put the pistol back on the settee. At that moment he heard a soft grunt and a gentle thud.

Without realizing it he continued moving upward so that he was on his feet and heading silently for the door, pistol in his hand, almost before registering that the grunt came from a man's throat. Yorke followed him a couple of seconds later.

Ramage gestured to him to stand to the left of the door, where he would be hidden if it was opened, and himself stood the other side, flat against the bulkhead. He watched the handle.

The light was so dim from the lantern over his desk that it was hard to see the wooden latch. Yes! It was lifting slightly ... and anyone wanting to see if he was lying in the cot at the after-end of the cabin or sitting at the desk on the starboard side would have to open the door at least a foot. And men entering a room or cabin tended to look first at the level of their own eyes.

Gently he lowered himself until he was crouching.

A black crack began to show as someone slowly opened the door, careful to do it gently for fear of a creaking hinge. The crack widened ... an inch, two inches ... four ... five ... Whoever it was could see part of the cabin but not the cot or the desk. Eight inches ... nine ... he could probably see the empty chair by the desk now ... eleven ... twelve ... he could see the whole of the desk and must guess the Captain was lying in the cot.

Suddenly the door flung open wide and the Bosun jumped into the cabin, a pistol in each hand, shouting at the cot, "Don't move!"

It took him a few moments to realize that there was no one in the heavily shadowed cot, and as he began to look round Ramage shot him in the leg. The flash of the gun blinded him for a second and the noise boomed in the tiny cabin, but as the Bosun pitched forward another man with a pistol took his place, saw Ramage crouching with an empty gun smoking in his hand, and sneered, "Now it's your turn, Mister Captain! We need your help to capture this ship!"

Ramage stood up slowly and glanced down at the Bosun. The man was lying on his face and had let go of both pistols as he tried to clutch the wound just above his knee.

Ramage knew that if he wanted to live he needed time. "Do you, indeed?" he said icily, recognizing the seaman as a man called Harris. "Do you want me to give the officer of the watch a written order? Or would you prefer me to ask the Admiralty?"

"None o' that smooth talk," Harris said harshly. "The shot will have roused that bloody slave-driver Southwick. I'm warning you, if he tries any nonsense, you get yourself shot. You're our second hostage, Mister Captain - sir," he added derisively.