Eighteen, nineteen, twenty ... That was Southwick's party. 'Mr Aitken ...' The first lieutenant looking, Ramage thought, as 'lean and hungry' as any yon Cassius with blackened face, led his men out on to the boom just as Southwick's boat drifted clear and close to Renwick's.

Again Ramage counted. Yes, that was Aitken's party.

'Orsini ...' The midshipman led his four men along the boom.

'Jackson ...' the coxswain appeared out of the darkness, 'Lead on.' Yes, he recognized the outline of Stafford. A muttered 'Buona fortuna, commandante,'came from Rossi. Nine ... eleven ... fifteen ... twenty.

Then Ramage was standing there alone except for a shadowy figure. 'Well, bosun, it's the first time you've had command of a frigate! Look after her until I get back!'

'Good luck, sir,' the bosun said. 'I'd prefer to be coming with you.'

'I know, but tonight you have to look after the Calypso.'

As Ramage walked out along the boom, hearing the wavelets slapping below, he cursed his own softheartedness. The man who should have been left in command was the gunner, a wretchedly weak-willed man whom Ramage had been intending to replace for a year or more, but the prospect of a long battle with the Board of Ordnance and the Navy Board had made him keep the fellow. It was said that Southwick had not spoken a word to the man for more than a year ...

He hitched his cutlass round to the centre of his back and pushed on the two pistols in his belt, and then went down the ladder. He stepped over feet and reached the sternsheets, to find himself with Paolo and the four Frenchmen, the rest of his own group being further forward. Jackson called softly to the man at the bow, who pulled the painter through the block and the boat drifted clear of the ship. The large black mass blotting out the stars on one side was the Calypso: the three shapes close by were the other boats. Over there was Île Royale which, like the Calypso, was only identifiable because of its outline against the stars.

Ramage was never really sure whether it was a hiss or a purr, but the sound of a boat's cutwater slicing through a calm sea was very restful, like going to sleep on board the ship with wavelets faintly tickling the hull. The men were breathing easily because they were rowing at a comfortable pace and the oars were groaning softly in the rowlocks instead of squeaking and clicking: the cloth lashings and the greasy slush from the cook's coppers wiped into the open-topped square rowlocks were effective.

The boat came clear of the Calypso's stern and Ramage had his first glimpse of L'Espoir from sea level. She seemed huge, black and menacing. No, perhaps not menacing - there were several lanterns casting yellowish cones of light on deck and reaching up to the under side of the yards which poised over the ship like eagles waiting to plunge.

Beyond he could just distinguish La Robuste in the distance: specks of dim light showed her position. At this very moment Wagstaffe should be leading four boats towards L'Espoir. Ramage was not too concerned that the two groups of boats arrived simultaneously because if one attacked before the other the French would concentrate on trying to beat it off and the second would take them by surprise. Hopes and fears: at this time they ran through one's thoughts like a pair of playful kittens.

In England it would be about half past eleven o'clock at night. Sarah would be in bed. Asleep? Probably, but perhaps lying awake thinking about him. If she was awake, he knew she was thinking about him. That was not conceit. It would have been if he had thought it before their honeymoon, but since then he had discovered that she needed him as much as he needed her, and that he occupied most of her life just as she occupied what was left of his after the Navy's demands were satisfied. Loneliness, he had realized, was something no bachelor really understood. Loneliness was a happily married man (or woman) sleeping alone, the absence of a loved one. Gianna... In Volterra it must be about half past one o'clock in the morning. Tomorrow morning, as far as they were concerned here. What was she doing? How was she? Where was she? Was she? He tried to drive the thought away. Was Paolo, sitting next to him in the sternsheets, thinking about his aunt? Was he wondering if Bonaparte's secret police had murdered her, or had her securely locked up, something which for a woman like her would be a kind of death -

'Qui va là?'

The challenge from the deck of L'Espoir was casual: there was no alarm in the sentry's voice. Nor, Ramage realized as his body unfroze from the first shock of the hail which had brought him back from Volterra, London, warm nights with Sarah at Jean-Jacques' château near Brest, anything but friendly expectancy.

And casually, a comforting and confident casualness, came Auguste's amiable reply, his Breton accent deliberately more pronounced than usual.

'Our captain is visiting your captain, citizen. Did you have a good voyage from Brest?'

Some night birds fussed in the distance and he recognized the squawk of a night heron. And another. They must be flying from Île Royale to the mangroves on the shore. And that squeakier note - and again. Oystercatchers? Perhaps. What about that damned sentry? Twenty yards to go. Would he be watching just this one boat he had first sighted? Or would he look beyond and see three more that, however stupid he was, would give the lie to Auguste's reply?

'One gale and five days of calm. What ship?'

'We are L'Intrépide, and that's La Robuste over there.'

'Your captain's name, citizen?'

Ramage hissed: 'Keep rowing: lay us alongside, whatever happens.'

'Citizen Camus, and who is he visiting?'

'Who is he visiting?' asked the puzzled sentry. 'Why our captain you said, citizen.'

'And what's your captain's name, you mule?' Auguste asked crossly.

'Magon,' said a deeper voice. 'I am the captain of L'Espoir. But rest on your oars ...' the voice sounded harsh yet uncertain. 'L'Intrépide, you say? That wasn't L'Intrépide that I saw. And Camus - I don't know that name.'

Would Auguste pull it off, delay for a couple of minutes? 'Pretend you're the captain!' he hissed at Gilbert. 'Interrupt in a moment!'

'I don't expect you do; we're bound for Brest from Batavia,' Auguste said, repeating the story Ramage had given him earlier.

'But even so,' the doubting voice said from L'Espoir's deck, 'I don't even remember "Camus" as a lieutenant.'

'Merdel' exclaimed Gilbert angrily, as though he was the Camus in question and whose patience was now exhausted. 'I haven't heard of "Magon" either, and L'Espoir hasn't exactly distinguished herself, has she; you probably spent all the last war safely blockaded in Brest. Took a peace treaty to get you out again, eh? Now you're at sea' - Gilbert paused a moment and Ramage thought he too had heard a shout from the other side of the ship - 'you've forgotten your manners. Good night, citizen. I'm not sitting here in my boat listening to that sort of welcome when I come to pay a visit!'

'No, no, you misunderstand me, citizen,' Magon said hastily, 'it's -'

He broke off as two pistol shots snapped across the frigate's deck and in the distance Ramage heard the night herons squawk in alarm. 'Alongside!' he shouted. 'Stand by to board, men!'

It seemed only a moment later that men were tossing oars and the cutter slammed against the frigate's hull and suddenly he could smell the humid, almost sickly smell of the weed that had grown along her waterline, and there was the reek of garlic, even down here.

Ramage leapt for the battens and both ahead and astern heard shouting in English and the thud, thud, thud of the spiked heads of tomahawks being driven into the hull planking to make steps for the men to board.