Was this the trap? Ramage stopped and motioned with his pistol that the man should stand his ground. Southwick and Aitken stood warily, like hunters waiting for the prey to walk into their gun sights, and the Calypso's boarders had all stopped and were watching Ramage, waiting for a signal or order.

Ramage glanced at Aitken and snapped: "Talk to her gunners!"

The first lieutenant, as he took the few paces to the nearest gun's crew, realized how quickly his captain was thinking: the gunners would reveal their nationality, why they had fired high when raking the Calypso, and who or what their captain was.

There were six men grouped round the nearest gun, all crouching, and none was armed: there was no sign of a cutlass, pistol, tomahawk, pike or musket; in fact a glance showed Aitken what they should have noticed from the Calypso, that the boarding pikes were still clipped into the racks fitting round the masts like dogs' collars.

The nearest man, holding the trigger lanyard, was obviously the gun captain but his face was white under a superficial tan and his eyes avoided Aitken's glare. He still stood in a half-crouch, as though he had just been kicked in the belly. To Aitken he looked like a pickpocket caught in a congregation and singled out by the parson up in the pulpit for special castigation.

"Do you speak English?" Aitken demanded.

The man nodded nervously.

"Well, stand up straight and tell me what's going on." Aitken suddenly realized something else. "Where are all the officers apart from the man in the black coat and a few midshipmen?"

At last the seaman threw the lanyard over the breech of the gun, out of the way (Aitken noticed the lock was not cocked, so the gun could not be fired), and stood to attention.

"All the officers are down in their cabins, sir. One of them could tell you. Yes, sir," he said eagerly, the idea becoming more appealing as he thought about it, "they'd all be able to tell you, 'specially the first lieutenant."

"You tell me, quickly!" Aitken snapped, slapping the flat of his cutlass against his leg, "or else you'll all be dead men in a couple of minutes: you fired on one of the King's ships. That's treason, to start with."

"Oh no!" the man protested in an agonized voice, and several of the others round the gun now stood up straight and added their protests. "We fired over you sir," the man said excitedly. "All of us did, even though we'd been told to rake you."

Ramage, out of earshot, called impatiently and Aitken said: "Quickly now, this is the Jason and one of the King's ships?"

"She's that," the man said. "Commissioned in Plymouth the week after the war started again. Bound from Barbados an' Jamaica with despatches."

"Why did you open fire?"

"Go on, sir; ask one of the officers," the man said evasively, his body wriggling like a hooked fish.

Aitken's brain felt numbed: if the man in black was the captain, the officers were down in their cabins, and the men were crouched down round guns whose locks were not cocked, then what the devil was going on?

"What were your orders if and when you were boarded by us?"

"Orders, sir? Oh Gawd, sir, it ain't like that at all: please go an' ask the officers 'cos they know all abart it."

"So none of you are going to fight us?"

"Fight you?" the man said in alarm. "Strike me, we bin 'oping fer weeks something like this would 'appen."

Aitken turned and reported to Ramage, who thought for a moment and then snapped out orders. "Rennick," he told the Marine lieutenant, "get all these men at the guns lined up on the fo'c'sle, with your Marines surrounding them."

Then, with his pistol covering the man in the black coat, he told Southwick: "Have all the Calypso's grapnels unhooked and hauled inboard. As soon as she's free I want Wagstaffe to get her clear and keep a gunshot to windward of us."

He looked round for Jackson and waved him over. "Collect half a dozen men here."

Then he turned to the man in the long black coat who was still standing there, calm and not a bit alarmed at having men from another ship swarming over the deck of his own ship; in fact, Ramage realized, the man had a strange remoteness, like an effigy in a church which had watched over the funerals, weddings and christenings for centuries and would continue until the church fell down, unless another Cromwell came along.

Ramage tucked the pistol in his belt and slid the cutlass back into the frog and deliberately looked the other man up and down. He said loudly to Aitken, aware that the words might well have to be remembered as evidence at a court of inquiry: "I wonder who this man is - you notice he is not wearing any sort of uniform. Green trousers, a long black coat, no hat . . ."

"Aye, sir," Aitken said, realizing the point of Ramage's remark. "There's no telling who he is."

"Come, sir," Ramage said, "you have the advantage of me: you have guessed who I am, but I only know your ship has just been firing at mine."

"Shirley, my dear Ramage, William Shirley at your service, a captain in the Royal Navy but lacking, I fear, your distinction."

"You have your commission?" Ramage asked sharply.

"Oh yes indeed, it's in a drawer in my desk. Shall we go down to my cabin and find it?"

"Later," Ramage said. He wanted witnesses to all the conversation with this man. "Less than half an hour ago you approached my ship in the Jason flying the wrong challenge and then giving the wrong answer when my ship hoisted the correct challenge."

"My dear fellow, you don't say so?" Shirley seemed genuinely upset. "How careless of me. Still, no harm came of my omission, I'm glad to say."

"No harm?" Ramage looked round at Aitken to make sure he had heard, and noticed that Jackson, Stafford and Rossi were among several other seamen who had, almost without realizing it, grouped round Shirley, covering him with their pistols. "You narrowly missed colliding with my ship and then fired a raking broadside into her. Do you call that 'No harm'?"

"A raking broadside?" Shirley repeated in a puzzled voice. "My dear Ramage, you are mistaking the poor Jason for someone else. Why should we want to rake one of the King's ships?"

"That's the point of my questions," Ramage said, adding heavily: "It is rather an unusual situation."

"Yes, it would be," Shirley agreed. "By the way, do I address you as 'my Lord' or just Ramage? I've heard it said you don't use your title in the Service."

"Ramage will do. Why did you open fire?"

Shirley shook his head sorrowfully, as though regretfully refusing some importunate request. "Must have been some other ship, my dear Ramage. Anyway, now we've settled that, I hope you can be persuaded to stay and dine with me. That is one of the complaints I have about the King's Service: at sea and on foreign stations one does meet such a poor class of person, and that is why it's such a pleasure to meet you."

Ramage gestured to him. "Come with me." He walked over to one of the starboard guns, ordered the crouching men to stand upright, and told the captain of the gun to step forward.

The man was in his early thirties, clean shaven, his hair tied in a neat queue. He had a green cloth tied round his forehead to absorb perspiration and did not wear a shirt above his white duck trousers.

"Name and rate?" Ramage asked.

"George Gooch, sir, rated able."

"Very well, Gooch. Tell me, have you fired this gun today?"

The man glanced at Shirley, looked down at the deck and said woodenly: "No, sir; ain't fired no gun."

Ramage nodded towards Jackson, who walked to the muzzle and sniffed. "It's been fired recently, sir. Inside half an hour."

"What have you to say to that?" Ramage asked Gooch. The man shook his head and refused to look up.

Ramage took Shirley's arm. "Come, Mr Shirley, let's examine that muzzle ourselves."