'Not run out.'

'Ah, yes. This brig is anchored in front of the Château and many important men - including the préfet maritime and Admiral Bruix, the commandant de l'Armée navale - are rowed out to the ship. They stay about an hour, and then after they return the crew of the Murex - her name can be read from the shore you understand - are brought on shore and given accommodation in the Château, while French sailors are taken out to guard the rest.'

'The rest of what?'

'Well, the officers, and a few seamen,' Gilbert said, clearly surprised at Ramage's question.

'But why are the officers and a few seamen being left on board? Who were the men brought on shore and lodged in the Château?'

'Why, they are the mutineers, of course!' Gilbert said. 'The officers and the seamen who did not mutiny are kept on board as prisoners of war. That,' he amended cautiously, 'is how Estelle understood it from Henri.'

The ship's company of the Murex brig mutinying within a few days - almost hours - of the resumption of war and carrying the ship into Brest to hand her over to the French? Ramage looked at Sarah, as if appealing to her to assure him that he had misheard. She stared at the floor, obviously stunned.

Who commanded the brig? He could be a lieutenant - almost certainly would be. The Murex would probably have left Plymouth or Portsmouth before war began. Most likely she was based on the Channel Islands.

But what caused a mutiny? The mutinies at the Nore and Spithead had brought better conditions for the Navy and he had never heard any murmurs of discontent since then. There was occasional loose talk of malcontents among Irish seamen; a few captains also complained of the activities of the London Corresponding Society, which some had blamed for the Nore and Spithead affairs, but the subsequent inquiry had produced no proof.

A mutiny in a single ship, Ramage felt instinctively, was the captain's fault. Either he was too harsh (like the late and unlamented Hugh Pigot, commanding the Hermione) or he was too slack, failing to notice troublemakers at work among the ship's company. The troublemakers did not have to be revolutionaries: far from it. There were always men who genuinely enjoyed stirring up trouble without a cause and without a purpose, and they usually became seamen or Members of Parliament, depending on their background. Either way, they talked shrilly without any sense of responsibility, like truculent whores at a window.

The Murex. Ideas drifted through his mind like snowflakes across a window - and, he admitted sourly, they had about as much weight. He looked up at Gilbert and smiled. 'Don't look so sad: now's the time to plot and scheme, not despair!'

The Frenchman shook his head sadly. 'We need a company of chasseurs or an English ship of the line, milord,' he said. 'Three or four of us against Bonaparte...'

'Don't forget Bonaparte was alone when he sent the Directory packing! From being a young Corsican cadet at the artillery school he rose to be the ruler of most of Europe ... Don't despair, Gilbert; come back in half an hour and we'll talk again. First, though, tell me who we can count on among the staff.'

'All are loyal, sir. I mean that none will betray us. For active help: well, Edouard, Estelle and her husband Louis - who was a fisherman before becoming a gardener when the authorities confiscated his boat - will actively help. The others may not care to risk their lives.'

'But those two men and the woman would?'

'Yes, because they all hate the new régime. Not that it's very new now, but they have all suffered. Estelle and Louis lost their fishing boat and then had to sell their little cottage in Douarnenez: Edouard's father should be buried in the cemetery at Landerneau, on the Paris road, but instead the body is in a mass grave near the guillotine they set up in Brest.'

'What did the father do?'

'A terrible crime,' Gilbert almost whispered. 'He was the Count's butler. He decided to stay here in France when the Count escaped to England because he could not see any danger from his own people for a butler. But he was denounced to the Committee of Public Safety as a Royalist.'

'On what evidence? That he worked for the Count?'

'Milord, you do not understand. If you are denounced, you are not brought before the kind of court you are accustomed to in England. You are first locked up, and next day, next week, next month - even next year - you are brought before a tribunal, the denunciation is read out, and you are sentenced. You might be asked for your explanation, but no one will be listening to it. The sentence is the same, whatever you say - the guillotine.'

'Does Edouard know who denounced his father?'

'No, but he knows the names of the three members of the tribunal.'

'What does he intend to do?'

'We Bretons are like your Cornishmen, milord: we have long memories and much patience. Edouard is prepared to wait for his revenge. Nor is he alone: there have been many unexplained accidents in the last year or two, so I hear: farms catch fire, the wheel comes off a cabriolet and the driver is killed or badly hurt ... it seems that a band of assassins occasionally prowl the countryside. It was only six months ago that members of tribunals stopped having armed guards at their houses. But now, milord, I will leave you for half an hour.'

When the door had shut, Sarah patted the bed beside her.

'Come and sit with me - I suddenly feel very lonely.' She leaned over and kissed him. 'If I said what I felt about that, you'd blush.'

'I'd like to blush. For the last few hours I've felt pale and wan.'

'If you'd told Gilbert to come back in two hours, I'd lure you to other things.'

'I had thought of that, but Gilbert will be expecting to hear of a plan worthy of Captain the Lord Ramage - one that frees Jean-Jacques and gets us all safely back to England.'

She looked at him carefully, as though inspecting a thoroughbred horse at a sale. 'A slight turning up at the corners of the mouth ... a brightness in at least one eye ... a jauntiness about the ears ... Or am I mistaken?'

'You're in love,' he said solemnly. 'I can produce plans as a cow gives milk, but they curdle as soon as you look at them.'

'What are the chances of rescuing Jean-Jacques?'

'You know the answer to that question.'

'Yes, I suppose I do. What are the chances of us escaping?'

He paused a minute or two. 'Better than they were, I think. It depends on how the French authorities regard the mutineers from the Murex. Yes, and what they intend to do with the officers and the seamen who did not join the mutiny and are still on board as prisoners of war.'

'Why is all that important?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't know. That's the worst of plans. Most of the time they're just ideas. Occasionally, if you're lucky, you can throw an idea at a problem and it solves it. That's how swallows make those nests of mud in odd places.'

'And was doing that what made Captain Ramage famous in the Navy for his skill and daring?'

'Captain Ramage is famous at the Admiralty for disobeying orders!'

'They do say,' Sarah said, 'that being too modest is another way of bragging.'

'Well, skill and daring have landed Captain Ramage with a wife in a château a few miles from Brest while his ship is at Chatham, which is only a war away.'

'You make it sound as though you're sorry you married me.'

He took her in his arms. 'No, my dear, I'm blaming myself for not having married you sooner: then I'd be taking the Calypso out of the Medway and you'd be safe in London or St Kew, starting to write a passionate letter to me saying how you miss me.'

Sarah sat up and patted her hair as there was a gentle knock at the door. Ramage realized with a guilty feeling that he had nothing to say to Gilbert. Well, maybe he could think aloud, but that seemed like cheating a man who trusted you.