Ramage walked between two guns and then looked out through a port. The Trades were kicking up their usual swell waves with wind waves sliding across the top of them. Not the sort of seas for ships to manoeuvre at close quarters; seas in which a cutter with strong men at the oars would have to take care. An accidental broach in those curling and breaking crests - which seemed sparkling white horses from the deck of a frigate but were a mass of airy froth which would not support a man's body or a boat any more than thick snow carried carriage wheels or horses' hooves - was something that kept a coxswain alert.

He turned forward again at the taffrail, cursing softly to himself. Devil take it; he wanted to concentrate all his thoughts and all his efforts on catching L'Espoir and rescuing her prisoners, without being bothered by another frigate, least of all French. An enemy which had to be attacked.

Yet... yet... He reached the quarterdeck rail and turned aft again, unseeing, walking instinctively, almost afraid to move or yet stand still because out there just beyond his full comprehension, like the dark hurrying shadows on a calm sea made by tiny whiffles of a breeze that came and went without direction or purpose, refusing to strengthen or go away, intent only on teasing, like a beautiful and wilful woman at a masked ball, there was a hint of an idea.

Well, at least he could see the wind shadows of an idea, and they hinted where this frigate could fit in. Taffrail, turn forward ... So let us consider the arguments against this vague, floating idea, or anyway what little he could grasp of it. Damage to the Calypso'sspars ... But they were still far enough north to make Barbados under a jury rig ... Seamen needed as prize crew and Marines as guards ... Now those dark whiffling shadows were becoming a little sharper, the edges more distinctly outlined... Quarterdeck rail and turn ...

No more hails from Jackson but, he suddenly realized, both Southwick and Aitken had been standing where he turned, waiting to say something but unwilling to interrupt his thoughts. He swung back to them.

'Sir,' Aitken said, 'the ship ahead is now in sight from here on deck. We can't make out her colours but from the cut of her sails and her sheer, she looks French all right. Shall we hoist our colours? Do you want the guns loaded now and run out?'

Ah, how one decision depended on another, but the sequence had to have a beginning. In this case the beginning was positively identifying the ship ahead as French. French-built with French-cut sails almost certainly made her one of Bonaparte's ships, because the last year and a half of peace ruled out her being recently captured by the Royal Navy.

Very well, she is French. 'Don't hoist our colours,' Ramage said. 'She probably wouldn't be able to see them anyway because we're dead to windward. Have the guns loaded. Canister, not roundshot, and grape in the carronades. We want to tear her rigging and sails, not splinter her hull. Don't run them out, though.'

He thought a moment. 'Have a dozen men rig up a line of clothes on the fo'c'sle. Laundry always looks so peaceful.' He grinned. 'Tell them that anything lost will be replaced by the purser.'

'Pusser's slops' were never popular with any seaman proud of his appearance. 'Slops', the name given to the shirts, trousers, material and other items which could be bought from the purser, who combined the role of haberdasher, tobacconist, and general supplier whose profit came from the commission he charged, were usually of poor quality. The shirts all too often came, so the men grumbled, in two sizes - too large and too small. Likewise the trousers were too long or too short. All were too expensive, as far as the men were concerned. The 'pusser' was rarely a popular man, and in most ships the victim of scurrilous stories. He was, the seamen of the Navy claimed, the only person who could make dead men chew tobacco. The miracle was performed when a seaman died or was killed and an unscrupulous purser put down in his books that the man had drawn a few pounds of tobacco, the price of which would be taken from the wages owing to relatives while the tobacco remained in the purser's store to be sold again. Careless pursers had even charged men who never touched tobacco.

Daydreaming ... Again Ramage cursed his habit of letting his mind go wandering up byways when his thoughts should stay on the highway.

He waited until Aitken had finished passing the orders and watched Martin, Kenton and Wagstaffe down on the maindeck supervising their divisions of guns. He looked around for Orsini and found the young midshipman waiting beside the binnacle. His role when the ship was at general quarters was to be near the captain, ready to run messages. He had once heard the boy complain to Martin that being the captain's aide de camp sounded a fine job in action, but Mr Ramage never wanted any messages taken anywhere ...

Well, Paolo could hardly complain with any justification: since Gianna had first asked Ramage to take her nephew to sea as a midshipman and teach him to be an officer in the Royal Navy, the lad had been in action half a dozen times or more; he had even been given command of a prize while in the Mediterranean.

Gianna. No matter how hard he tried to shut her out, and no matter how he and Paolo had tactfully not talked about her when he had rejoined the Calypso, she came back. Not because of a broken love affair, because it was not really like that, and since Gianna had left England he had met Sarah and they had fallen deeply in love and married. Still, that did not mean he was not very worried over Gianna's safety or did not have affectionate memories of her.

It had been a relationship which now had a strange air of unreality about it: could it have happened to him, had she really existed? Well, she had and did because that handsome youngster over there, one of the most popular people in the ship as far as the men were concerned, was her nephew. Yes, she was the ruler of Volterra, a small state in Tuscany; yes, she had fled before Bonaparte's Army of Italy, and been rescued by Lieutenant Ramage, who had carried her to safety ... Yes, they had both fallen in love and she had gone to England as a refugee and lived with his family, and yes it was obvious now that with such differences in religion the Catholic ruler of Volterra could never marry the Protestant heir to one of the oldest earldoms in the kingdom.

It had taken Bonaparte to end it all, though, just as he had, some years ago, then simply the General commanding the Army of Italy, unknowingly started it. Then, when Britain and France had signed that peace now called the Treaty of Amiens, Gianna had decided it was safe to return to Tuscany: that it was her duty to return to her people ... Ramage, his father, many people, had warned her not to trust Bonaparte, that the peace would be brief, that she risked arrest by Bonaparte's police at best, assassination at worse, but she had gone. She had travelled to Paris with the Herveys while he had sailed on a long voyage with the Calypso, lucky to remain employed and in command in peacetime, and by bizarre circumstances he had met Sarah, returned to England and married her - and found there was no news of Gianna. No one knew if she had arrived in Volterra or not. The Herveys confirmed that she had left Paris safely, but that accounted for only the first steps on a long journey. Then, while he and Sarah had honeymooned in France, the war had started again, and with it went the last chance of knowing about Gianna.

Daydreaming again, and now the French ship was hull-up on the horizon. He looked with his glass. Yes, backed foretopsail and lying there like a gull on the water, rising and falling as the crests and troughs of the swell waves slid beneath her and carried on westward. Sails in good condition. French national colours hoisted. Guns not run out. A hoist of flags at the foretopmasthead, probably her pendant numbers identifying her.