"When Rossi spoke to the Marchesa this afternoon - yesterday afternoon, I mean - he told her to pretend she had gone off her head and start screaming. I hoped that -"

But Our Ned was shaking his head. He drew a finger across his throat in an unmistakable gesture.

"It was our only hope," Ramage said lamely, "we'll be off Cabo Finisterra in a few hours."

"I know that, sir; that's why I got the Marchesa out tonight."

The first person to sight the English coast four days later was Rossi, and his hail from the masthead that he could just make out land broad on the larboard bow secured him the guinea Ramage had offered earlier in Lisbon. It also confirmed Southwick's latitude sight at noon, when his calculations put the ship thirty-five miles south-west of the Lizard.

Two hours later, as the Lady Arabella surged along before a brisk west wind, with a scattering of cloud, they could see enough from the deck to recognize the high land of the Lizard, now slowly drawing abeam as the packet headed for Plymouth. "Probably the first time she's not rounded the Manacles and slipped into Falmouth," Yorke commented. "Could probably find her own way in."

And every mile up the River Fal would have taken Ramage closer to St Kew, to Blazey Hall, where his father and mother would be waiting, anxious to know what had happened in Lisbon; whether he and Gianna were safe. Suddenly he felt an almost overpowering nostalgia for his home, mingling with a deep love for Gianna, who even now was standing beside him at the taffrail.

More than a year had passed since he had looked astern over the taffrail of the Triton brig at the Lizard dropping below the horizon. Since then, he blushed at the recollection, he had had a couple of affairs, ones which left no nostalgia, only pleasant memories - and been nearly killed four times. Five, if you included the Bosun's attempt. And he had lost the Triton after a hurricane. Yes, it had been a busy time and the months had passed quickly. But the next few days would pass slowly enough to make up for it.

So now, although off the Portuguese coast he had despaired of ever doing so, he was looking at the Lizard again, and with him were Southwick, Jackson, Stafford, Rossi, Maxton and a few more of the Triton's original crew.

The Lizard meant all things to all men. The last sight of England for many great sailors - and pirates and smugglers and scallywags too. Drake had looked back on it at the beginning of his last voyage - and had been buried at sea off Portobello, thousands of miles away on the Spanish Main. Henry Morgan, freed from arrest after ingratiating himself with Charles II, who had then made him a knight, looked back on it as he returned to Jamaica to become its governor and continue as the most successful pirate the Caribbean had ever seen.

It had been the last sight of an oppressive country - countries rather, since many on board were Dutch - for those in the Mayflower; the first sight of the country he was supposed to conquer for the Duke of Medina Sidonia and the troops embarked in the Spanish Armada.

And, he grinned to himself, a welcome sight for Lieutenant Ramage and for the Marchesa di Volterra, otherwise Gianna, otherwise a small and black-haired girl with a mouth slightly too large for classical beauty, and deep brown eyes, and bosoms whose promise kept him awake at night, and a temper which could be imperious or flare like Etna on a dark night, and a love which knew no limits...

He suddenly realized Southwick was standing in front of him.

"Sorry sir," the Master said, guessing that the sight of the Lizard was stirring up memories, "but we can bear away, to north-east by east, and if the wind holds we'll pick up the Eddystone an hour after daybreak."

"Very well," Ramage said, "and I'd better get below and start preparing the paperwork."

Plymouth ... the Commander-in-Chief, if he was there, otherwise the Port Admiral, would be waiting for a sheaf of returns, since the Lady Arabella was sailing under Admiralty, not Post Office orders. Ramage cursed because he did not have the necessary stationery. Now he had to try to remember the headings on the dozen and one standard forms he was expected to have filled in and ready on arrival.

Anyway, the worst of the paperwork was done: the most important was the report for Lord Spencer. The mutiny had simplified everything, Yorke pointed out: Ramage had written half the report before it started and had been sitting at his desk preparing to complete it only a few minutes before the Lady Arabella's Bosun sneaked in with a pistol in each hand. The mutiny should convince the First Lord that there was treachery in the Packet Service.

What he now had to do was to prepare a report for the Commander-in-Chief, or the Port Admiral, which revealed nothing! Enough to satisfy his curiosity, but not enough to endanger secrecy. The List of Prisoners was complete - not often a ship commanded by a naval officer arrived at Plymouth with prisoners all of whom were British. A list with a hundred French or Spanish names, yes, that was a commonplace, and boats would soon take them over under Marine guard to the prison hulks lying in the Hamoaze. But a list of British prisoners, all accused of mutiny, one of murder and another of attempted murder - that was rare.

He went to his cabin, sat at the desk and unscrewed the cap of the inkwell, lodging the wide-based bottle between two books against the rolling of the packet. After trying unsuccessfully to recall what he had read in the slim volume of the printed 'Plymouth Port Orders', he thought of the 'Portsmouth Port Orders' which he had more recently read, since that was the port from which he had sailed with the Triton.

His mind was still a blank ... "... a correct statement of their defects, deficiencies of sails, rigging and stores, specifying every particular..." The phrase came to him, though he could not remember from which port orders.

He took a sheet of paper from a drawer and in the top right-hand corner wrote, "His Majesty's packet brig Lady Arabella.' If it had been his own ship - one he would continue to command - he would have discussed the report carefully with Southwick, because the list of defects and deficiencies meant that a survey would be held and - if the penny-pinching dockyard agreed to them - they would be put right. But any defects and deficiencies found after the survey would not exist, as far as the dockyard was concerned: all port admirals and dockyard commissioners sang the same chorus: after that survey, "no second survey will be allowed ..."

In the case of the Lady Arabella, though, the Port Admiral would probably forward the report to the Post Office, and there it would grow dusty on some shelf.

He scribbled a few lines, mentioning the rot found in the ship, and referring to Southwick's attached survey - he must remember to attach it! Much had already given him a list of stores remaining, and he had Stevens' original lists. The lists of sails and rigging were routine.

Although if the dockyard felt the packet was its concern the survey would give the master shipwright plenty of work, there was nothing wrong with the rigging for the surveying master to fuss about, apart from "fair wear and tear". Ramage only hoped the commissioner would not want the sails taken on shore for survey; he had too few men for that, and commissioners begrudged even a moment of their time, let alone that of a dozen of their men...

Leave of absence. He had to make an application to the Admiral before going up to the Admiralty; admirals were almost as harsh with commanding officers leaving their ships without written permission as with seamen who deserted by swimming on shore at dead of night.