Ramage turned over and began swimming on his stomach. All the men had practised keeping their feet well below the surface, to avoid making any noise, and he was sure he was silent. He hitched the cutlass into the middle of his back and suddenly thought about sharks. No one had seen any sign of one all the time the Calypso had been anchored at Trinidade, but now, with only the stock round his hips, he suddenly felt vulnerable. It must be the darkness, he told himself, because he had never given it a thought while swimming naked with the men in daylight. Not only shark but barracuda, of which they had seen many. He found himself swimming faster, then realized that his strokes were making a noise.

He turned over on his back and saw from the stars that he had been swimming round in a half circle. He looked back and was surprised to see that the Calypso was now some distance away. He checked the position of Orion's Belt, which was acting as his compass, and after a few strokes decided to tread water and look for some sign of the Earl of Dodsworth. When he could see her masts clearly against the stars he began swimming again in a powerful overarm stroke. There was little or no phosphorescence, and at this distance if the guards heard a splash they would assume it was a fish leaping to escape a predator. A predator like a shark or a barracuda. . .

The sea now seemed warm and the air cooler on his face while he was treading water. In the Tropics at night the sea usually stayed at more or less its daytime temperature while the air temperature dropped below that of the water.

Where was Gianna now? Thinking of her took his mind off the thought of sharks and barracuda possibly circling below him, but as he congratulated himself on not feeling tired so far, he thought of the two dozen men who would be swimming in his wake from the Calypso in half an hour or so, and the twenty who would follow Aitken to the Amethyst. Was it possible that all of them would escape cramp, shark or barracuda? Was it possible that the whole operation would be achieved without someone screaming with pain as a shark's teeth took off a leg or the backward-pointing teeth of a barracuda ripped out a great piece of flesh? He shivered and wanted to clutch himself protectively, but to do so would miss a stroke and armour him about as effectively as a shrivelled fig leaf.

He began counting the strokes and stopped at a hundred for a rest, not because he was tired but to avoid arriving at the Earl of Dodsworth out of breath. There was no hurry; once on board and his first task accomplished, he would have to wait for the boarding party to arrive. Wet feet. Suddenly he realized that once he was on board he would have to be careful that his wet footmarks did not give him away. Even in the moonlight they would show up on the dry decks like blobs of black paint. He should have brought a towel, or a length of dry cloth, in a sealed glass jar. A thin roll of nankeen slid into a bottle which was then tightly corked would have done the job. Well, he had not thought of it and now it was about a quarter of a mile too late.

What else had he forgotten? He coughed as a wavelet slopped at the moment that he opened his mouth to take a breath. The salt water seared his throat and he immediately trod water and turned his face away from the ship. The sound of a racking cough like this would carry for miles; it seemed that he was coughing up his lungs as well as his throat. Finally the spasm ended and he thought of the two dozen swimmers who would soon be following him. If only one man in four accidentally swallowed water, as he had just done, that would mean six of them rasping away in the darkness . . .

He resumed swimming once his breathing returned to normal. This swim was taking longer than he anticipated, although he had cured himself of the tendency to swim in a half circle. It was hard on the neck trying to keep an eye on a star constellation which was almost overhead: he should have thought of that and chosen one nearer the horizon - except none in the right direction were as obvious as Orion's Belt, which could be identified at a glance.

All of a sudden - or so it seemed - the Earl of Dodsworth was in front of him, like a huge castle wall in the moonlight. For the last few minutes he had been swimming and distracting himself by having a furious argument with Gianna in his imagination as he tried to persuade her to get into a carriage he had waiting outside the Herveys' Paris residence.

The bow was to his left and he swam cautiously towards it, propelling himself by slow strokes with his feet as he checked the cutlass, the stock and the sheath knife strapped to his shin. There was little or no wind and the Earl of Dodsworth had her bow to the northeast, riding to the current which, weak at the moment, ran continually to the southwest and meant that her anchor cable would probably be hanging down almost vertically.

The mainyard seemed to show up strangely, as though it was emitting a faint orange glow. Then he caught sight of a glow in several gunports and realized that a lantern on deck amidships was lighting up part of the deck, rigging and mainmast. How would he get aft from the fo'c'sle without being seen if the guards were amidships with a lantern?

He turned towards the stern. Unless an odd rope or an extra rope ladder was hanging over, there was scant chance that he would be able to board there, but it was a chance he could not afford to neglect.

Now he was swimming as carefully as if he was walking across a frozen pool in hobnailed boots: the Earl of Dodsworth's sides rose almost sheer out of the water and he could make out the gunports - East Indiamen were always heavily armed; from a distance an unskilled eye often took them for warships. Now the outward curve of the stern and the sternlights, the big windows which lit the main cabin. Again there was the glow of a lantern, but no rope or ladder hung down.

He had arrived - just the length of the ship to cover, to reach the anchor cable - and he was feeling cold, but he was not puffing. All that would change soon: he would be hot and puffing by the time he reached the hawsehole after climbing the cable.

He stopped from time to time, keeping himself afloat by holding the tips of his fingers against the edges of copper sheathing, and listened for voices, but he heard nothing. The eight guards in the Earl of Dodsworth - did they stand a two-on-and-six-off watch at night?

Here was the cable: eight inches in diameter, perhaps ten, as thick as a man's leg at the knee. He checked the cutlass and knife again, paused for a few minutes while he breathed deeply, and then clasped his legs round the rope and pushed up while grasping it and hauling with his arms. The cordage was new and the thick strands of the cable-laid rope made it much easier to hold. Quickly he found the rhythm: clasp tight with the ankles, straighten up the body and then hold with the thighs; reach up with the hands, haul higher by making the body jackknife while sliding the legs higher.. .Ten feet above water, fifteen, twenty . . . Supposing a guard's bowels were troubling him and he came to the head, the so-called 'seat of ease' built in the stem, one each side of the bowsprit in an Indiaman like this and merely a wooden form with a circular hole. A seaman sitting there would hear someone climbing the anchor cable.

He had slowed down, his breathing shallow, until he realized that the chances of anyone being there were negligible and anyway it was too late to do anything about it. He resumed the scissor-cutting movement and worked his way up to the hawsehole, where he paused and listened. As soon as he was satisfied that no one had heard him he reached up, carefully holding the blade of the cutlass so that it did not hit a piece of metal and make a clang, and climbed on board.

Looking down at the sea he was almost hypnotized by the reflection of all the stars. He began to shiver as the water dripped off him, and he tried to squeeze as much as he could from his hair. His teeth were going to be chattering in a moment unless he did something about it. He walked aft until the belfry hid him from anyone abaft the fo'c'sle and reached over his shoulder to draw the cutlass, which he put flat on the deck and then removed the belt, now stiff and cold from the salt water. Then he pulled the pin from the stock and unwound it so that he was standing naked, except for the sheath knife on his shin.