Ramage looked up, startled. 'No, sir. At least, not unless their Lordships ask me.'

'You don't need the halfpay,' St Vincent said.

'I had no intention of requesting it, sir,' Ramage said tartly. 'As far as I know, I am still on full pay in command of the Calypso and on a month's leave.'

St Vincent had moved the Gazette, which had hidden a bulky letter bearing the Admiralty seal. The Earl picked up the packet, turned it over so that Ramage could read the superscription, and slid it across the table to him.

'Captain the Lord Ramage, H.M. frigate Calypso, Chatham.'

As Ramage reached out for the packet, St Vincent held up his hand. 'Don't open it yet: read the back.'

Just below the seal, copperplate handwriting said: 'Secret orders - not to be opened until south of latitude 10 degrees North.'

Ten North! That was south of the latitude of Barbados in the West Indies or the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. So the orders concerned the South Atlantic. The coast of Africa or South America in peacetime? What on earth could be happening down there?

St Vincent stood up and walked to the window. There was not much to see; Ramage knew that this and the Board Room's three other windows overlooked a stable. The early morning sky with its scattering of cloud was now becoming overcast; there would be rain by teatime.

Abruptly, and with his back to Ramage, the First Lord asked: 'How is the Calypso's refit proceeding?'

Obviously the First Lord did not trust the daily reports he received from his dockyard commissioners. 'Slowly, sir, as far as I could see when I was on board three days ago.'

'Ah yes, you and your visitors took up a lot of time.'

'Indeed, sir?' Ramage could almost see the Commissioner's report. 'How so, sir?'

'The dockyard men could not get on with shifting the guns.'

'Sir, there hasn't been a single dockyard man on board since the Calypso moored up in Chatham.'

St Vincent swung round. 'Rubbish! You've had eighty men!'

'Excuse me, sir,' Ramage said carefully. 'I was told by the Commissioner I would get eighty men, to shift the guns. In fact none arrived and my own men have been doing the work. My first lieutenant had a great deal of trouble getting even a few hoys to carry the French guns on shore.'

St Vincent sat down at the table and quickly shuffled through a pile of papers. He found one page and ran his finger down it. His eyes flicked back and forth along the lines.

'The Commissioner has allocated 110 men to the Calypso. Eighty to get the guns out; twenty are riggers; and ten are to help strike that foreyard.'

'When were those men supposed to start work, sir?'

The date the First Lord gave was the day after the Calypso arrived in Chatham. 'We might have been allocated 110 men, sir, but none has come on board, unless they started today. I was there on Friday and I can't think they'd work half a day on Saturday. Yesterday, Sunday, was a holiday.'

'The Commissioner himself signed this return, Ramage; are you calling him a liar?'

Ramage pictured the ingratiating figure at the jetty, rolls of fat quivering, servile to the Admiral - and using the Ramage family visit as an excuse for 'delaying' men not even on board.

'A liar, sir, with respect, and a fraud too. Where were those 110 men working?'

'I intend finding out,' St Vincent said grimly, 'but don't you go down to Chatham until your leave expires; it's better that I stir things up at Somerset House.'

The Navy Board occupied Somerset House, and there the Comptroller, Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, held sway. Probably the most dishonest man connected with the Royal Navy, he controlled the purchase of everything concerning the King's ships. Everything from rum to salt pork; timber to trousers for the men. All of it was bought from private contractors; all bought, Ramage thought bitterly, with 'a token of our esteem' being sent by the contractors to people like Hamond. More than a hundred dockyard men should have been working on the Calypso for more than seven days. What were they doing? Where had the Commissioner sent them? That many men in seven days could probably build a house, Aitken had said. Did one of the Commissioner's friends now have a new house on Gad's Hill?

The First Lord finished writing a note, rang a small silver bell and gave the sheet of paper to the clerk who hurried in. 'Give that to Mr Nepean. I want it ready for signature before noon.'

Once the clerk had left the room, St Vincent said: 'I deliberately left you in command of the Calypso. Have you wondered why?'

'No, sir,' Ramage said, trying to guess the reason for the question.

'You don't lack confidence, young man.'

Something in St Vincent's tone angered Ramage and before he could stop himself he said: 'Captains lacking confidence usually put their ships upon a reef, sir.'

'Quite,' St Vincent said amiably. 'I was commenting, not criticizing. Your skin is too thin. However, your new orders. You rarely carry out my orders in accordance with their wording -'

'But always in the spirit of their meaning, sir!'

'- their wording,' St Vincent repeated, ignoring the interruption. 'Where do you stand on the post list?' he demanded.

'About tenth from the bottom, sir.'

'An admiral tenth from the top of the flag list is more tactful when speaking to the First Lord.'

'I apologize for my manner, sir.'

'But not for your words, eh? Anyway, your new orders concern something where it is highly probable that your views and the Board of Admiralty's coincide.' There was a hint of a smile round St Vincent's mouth. 'They are also the first orders you have ever received in time of peace.'

Ramage recalled previous encounters with St Vincent and his predecessor as First Lord, Earl Spencer. Always there was the heavy emphasis on his disobeying orders, but it seemed more a question of 'give a dog a bad name' because the orders were always carried out. That was the important thing; no senior officer had ever told him to do something and then had to blame him for failure. The trouble was that senior officers soon regarded themselves as omnipotent. Instead of simply writing orders telling the officers what was to be done, they went into details of how they were to be carried out, and that was the mistake. No one could anticipate every circumstance. It was the man on the spot, the captain of the ship, who had to make his plans according to the situation he found. Surely a general did not order a colonel to capture a particular fort and tell him by what highways, tracks and byways he was to approach it. Perhaps generals did ...

'Do you know anything about surveying?'

'Surveying, sir?'

'Obviously you don't; the word has paralysed you. Well, you can go through the Marine Department and get some instruction from the Hydrographer, Dalrymple, or his assistant, Walker. You need to know how to survey an island and chart the water round it.'

'Aye, aye, sir. A large island?'

'No. Perhaps a couple of miles long by one wide.'

'Do any charts or maps exist, sir?'

'A rough chart; nothing to rely on.'

'Might I ask -?'

'Trinidade.'

'Trinidad? Why, there's -'

'Not Trinidad,' St Vincent said testily, 'but Trinidade.' He was careful to emphasize the second 'e' by pronouncing it as a 'y'. 'It's off the Brazilian coast, seven hundred and fifty miles east-north-east of Rio de Janeiro and seven hundred from Bahia.'

'Does it belong to Spain or Portugal, sir?'

'What I am going to tell you remains secret until you open your orders. At present it - I'm referring to the service upon which you are being sent - is known to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, myself and Nepean, who wrote the orders. As far as your family and your ship's company are concerned, you are bound for the South Seas.'