The sun was setting, and within half an hour it would plunge below the mangrove swamps and distant hills lining the mainland. Already Île Royale and Île St Joseph seemed to have changed shape as the shadows lengthened and moved round, the sun lighting the crest of fresh hills and darkening valleys.

The captain was on deck: they all knew that because when he wanted to spend some time alone pacing up and down, he had told Martin, who was officer of the deck, that he could go below for an hour.

They looked questioningly at the captain as they reached the quarterdeck, and he simply gestured seaward.

There, like a grey swan gliding on the far side of a lake, a frigate had just come in sight round the end of Île Royale.

'She looks French-built,' he said, and told Orsini: 'Go aloft with a bring-'em-near and see what you make of her. You, Kenton and Martin, had better get over to LaRobuste.'

Ramage then looked again at the approaching ship, at the Île Royale which was a grey, black-streaked monster crouching close by, and at LaRobuste, anchored abeam. From pacing the quarterdeck he knew the wind was steady from the southeast at ten to fifteen knots.

Speeds and distances. Although the approaching frigate had at first been hidden behind the Île Royale, now she had drawn clear he could see she had only three miles to reach the point where she would expect the pilot canoe to be waiting.

I command L'Espoir and am at the end of the long and potentially dangerous voyage across the Atlantic, he told himself. My pilot book tells me where to anchor (there, where two frigates are already anchored) and that I should find the pilot just off the western end of Île Royale.

However, there is no pilot. I curse because, apart from anything else, the sun is too low to penetrate the water enough to show reefs and rocks, and the sea is too smooth in this lee to break. And soon it will be dark. What do I do?

Obviously I assume the two anchored frigates have seen me approaching. The pilot book tells me where the bank of dangerous rocks is, and the two frigates indicate the anchorage. One or both of the frigate captains will notice that the pilot does not meet me and if I try to get to the anchorage they will have warning guns ready. So I shall creep in under topsails, and if I get too near the bank a frigate's guns will warn me, and if it gets too shallow my own leadsman will warn me.

Yes, Ramage told himself, that is what he would be thinking and doing himself, and he was damn'd sure that is what the French captain was thinking and doing. The Frenchman would be concentrating his thoughts first on the outlying rocks and reefs and then on the shallow banks with soft muddy bottoms. And at the back of his mind there would be the prospect of a good supper at the governor's house with fresh meat instead of salt tack, and fresh fruit and fresh vegetables.

Aitken was inspecting LaRobuste with a telescope. 'I can see Wagstaffe watching. There are a few men on deck and they look very French.' He closed the telescope and looked aloft and forward to check the Calypso. 'We do, too, sir.' He sniffed in a fair imitation of Southwick. 'And I can't wait to have the men back at work with the brick dust putting a shine on our brasswork. It's so green that the ship begins to look like those copper roofs in Copenhagen.'

'1 didn't know you'd ever been there.'

'Copenhagen, Elsinore, Christiania, Malmö, Stockholm ... Yes, I know the Cattegat and Skagerrak, sir. In fact every time I see some weathered copper or brass I think of Copenhagen. Those spires and towers make it a lovely city. You know it?'

Ramage nodded, and both men were aware that they were using this inane conversation to pass the time. As they watched, L'Espoir seemed to slow down, but they knew that it was their own reactions quickening.

Opening his telescope again and carefully lining up the focusing ring he had filed in the eyepiece tube, Ramage looked carefully at the peak at the western end of Île Royale. The church stood shadowed and the big western door closed. The flagstaff was bare and there was no movement round the building.

Obviously the garrison commander or préfet had listened to the pilot's story that Brest had la peste and that although the two frigates already arrived had lost only a few men, a third frigate still on her way was believed to have lost many more. The garrison commander would assume that this frigate was the third and that she, even more than the other two, must be prevented from bringing la peste to the three islands which were already crowded with convicts and déportés. Only one hospital, the pilot book said, and Ramage could picture it: built of stone, small windows, one or perhaps two small wards, four beds in each, and nearby a cemetery situated in a place where there was a reasonable thickness of earth on the rock. And both hospital and cemetery within a short distance of the church: one did not walk far in the sun in a latitude of five degrees North, and funerals were always held within twenty-four hours of death.

Funerals! His mind had a macabre twist at times. Ah, L'Espoir was furling her courses. Quite unconsciously he began counting the seconds, which merged into minutes, and he began extending his fingers so he could keep a better tally. Finally both courses were furled and he turned to find Aitken grinning at him.

'Short of topmen, short of petty officers, or just aren't in a hurry, sir? I saw you timing them.'

'Just French,' Ramage said. 'Latins measure time by different watches and clocks than us!'

Now L'Espoir was abreast the western end of the Île Royale and began turning in a graceful arc until she was head to wind and, in a few moments, hove-to just where the pilot canoe had been waiting when the Calypso and La Robuste arrived. Now only a few sodden logs marked fishpots ...

Ramage glanced at his watch and then turned to look at the sun, which was a perfect red orb with the lower edge exactly its own diameter above the horizon. The French captain had about fifteen minutes to decide that the pilot was not coming out tonight and make for the anchorage ...

Exactly five minutes later L'Espoir's foretopsail was braced up and she bore away towards the Calypso and LaRobuste.

'Send the parties to their stations, Mr Aitken,' Ramage said quietly, and went down to his cabin to collect his pistols and sling a cutlass belt over his right shoulder.

Back on deck, Ramage steadied the glass against the rigging and studied L'Espoir, a graceful but weather-worn ship, in the circular frame of the telescope's lenses. Certainly he had no doubt that she was L'Espoir, he had seen in Brest that she was, very unusually, painted a dull russet red: a red very similar to the colour of rust. And, as the last of the sun caught her side squarely, he could see why that colour had been chosen: rust weeps from dozens of bolts streaked her hull as though the tails of dull red cows had been nailed to her side. The paint almost disguised the weeps but they were as obvious to a seaman's eye as the sobs after a weeping woman dried her eyes.

Ramage walked to the taffrail and looked over the stern. Three of the Calypso's boats were streamed astern on their painters and the fourth was just securing to the end of the boat boom, after taking Kenton and Martin to LaRobuste. A rope ladder hanging down from the outer end allowed men to climb up on to the boom; a line running parallel with the boom to the ship's side acted as a handrail.

Ramage had been amused at the sight of many of the men sitting round on the maindeck with 'prayerbooks' (the small blocks of Portland stone used as holystones to clean the deck), sharpening cutlasses and squaring up the three-sided tips of boarding pikes. He had forbidden them to hoist up the big grindstone on deck because it made a harsh noise and while no man, however sharp his cutlass, could resist 'having a whet' on the stone, the unmistakable noise would carry to Île Royale and Île St Joseph, and make some people wonder.