Ramage nodded and told Aitken: "Hail the lookouts, tell them what to look for, and give them bearings. Incidentally," he added, "we'll probably find the fleet some distance from Cadiz: the admiral won't want to frighten the enemy into staying in port..."

"Aye, and young Orsini, you'll know the shoreline of Cadiz well enough soon," Southwick said. "His Lordship will have a frigate or two close up to Rota and Cadiz - a mile or two off - and a line of repeating frigates to within sight of the fleet. Tack, tack, wear, wear . . . and where do you go if there's a westerly gale, eh? Not up on the beach, I trust."

Orsini knew enough not to answer, and he watched as Aitken picked up the speaking trumpet and hailed the foremast and mainmast lookouts.

It has been a long chase, Ramage thought, and we did not catch up with the Victory. Well, Lord Nelson was in a hurry but he could not have made Captain Hardy drive the big three-decker any harder than the Calypso had been sailed. But a bigger ship with a much longer waterline length would always be faster if there was any weight in the wind - and it had been just the right wind for the Victory . . .

Half an hour later the foremast lookout hailed that he could just see clouds that seemed to come off the lee of a mountain; fifteen minutes later he confirmed one mountain and reported more cloud to the south of it.

Ramage looked at Orsini. "You know what to look for now, so take a bring-'em-near and aloft with you!"

Orsini seized a telescope and made for the ratlines of the mainmast shrouds, climbing at the run.

"I wasn't fair to him," Southwick commented. "He's a good lad. And just look at him, he's going up like a topman!"

"So he should," Ramage said dryly. "When I was a midshipman his age, my captain expected midshipmen to go aloft faster than topmen."

The master chuckled. "Yes, but topmen don't have to remember places with these outlandish foreign names."

"They're not foreign to Orsini: remember, he speaks fluent Spanish. Cabezo del Moro means 'The Moor's Head' to him - which I'm sure it doesn't to you: and although he doesn't know it, I expect he's distantly related to the Medina Sidonia family anyway - these Spanish and Italian families were always marrying each other."

"Certainly these place names'd be easier to remember if I knew what they meant," Southwick admitted. He took off his hat and scratched his head. "I'm surprised we haven't come across other frigates or 74s joining the fleet."

"I think most of 'em are already out here," Ramage said. "Those two 74s in Chatham won't be ready for sea for another couple of months. We're probably the last to join His Lordship - except perhaps for the two frigates we saw off the Isle of Wight."

By now Orsini, a tiny figure perched at the masthead, was shouting down to the quarterdeck with his hail being repeated by the lookout. Southwick held the mouthpiece of the speaking trumpet to his ear.

He nodded to himself, gave a satisfied smile and then, turning the trumpet so he could talk into the mouthpiece, shouted back: "Very well, keep a sharp lookout for Medina Sidonia!"

The master turned to Ramage. "He's certain about 'The Moor' and Aljibe, and thinks he's sighted a sail in line with where Cadiz should be."

He thought a moment and then asked Ramage: "What's 'Aljibe' mean, then?"

"'Aljibe' is a cistern or water catchment, and 'Pico' means 'Peak'."

"Your Spanish must be good sir; I keep forgetting that. I remember that time you were in Cartagena, pretending to be a Spaniard."

"Yes, I can pass myself off as a Castilian, but some of the local accents are hard to understand. A fast-talking Galician from the north, or an excited yokel from Murcia - the province of Cartagena - can leave me baffled."

The two men talked for half an hour, reminiscing over past actions ranging from Italy to southern France and on to Spain before crossing the Atlantic to the West Indies and the coasts of the Spanish Main.

"India," Southwick said, "now there's a country I've never been to. Can't say I've any great wish in that direction," he admitted.

"My wife loved it - her father was Governor of Bengal, as you know. She says the variety is fantastic: plains wider than you could ever imagine; great mountains: the cool hill stations to which everyone retreats in the hot season . . . Imagine a country so large you could drop in England and lose it!"

At that moment Orsini hailed again. Southwick listened with the makeshift ear trumpet and reported to Ramage: "He says it's definitely Medina Sidonia fine on the starboard bow and he can make out land below it. We must be about fifteen miles off."

"Near enough to Cadiz to sight some of the fleet soon. Tell him to watch for any sail. What happened to that ship he sighted?"

"He can't see her any longer: reckons she must have been steering south."

"Very well, tell him to instruct the lookout and then come down. There are a score of ships of the line off Cadiz: just our luck not to sight one. Still, our frigates will be off Cadiz . . ."

As the Calypso bore up for the fleet, pendant numbers flying, Ramage had the feeling he was walking into a forest. More than twenty ships of the line meant more than sixty great masts, and in the middle of them was the Victory. Then, with almost startling suddenness, he was tacking through the fleet - under the Revenge's stern, across the Colossus's bow, watch out for the Ajax because she's fore-reaching on you . . . What the devil is the Orion doing, is no one keeping a lookout? . . . Why the devil does the Bellerophon have to choose this minute to tack - no wonder she's always known as the "Billy Ruffian" - and now the blasted Polyphemus ("Polly Infamous" to the sailors) is heaving-to just as I was intending to go under her transom . . . now the damned Mars looks as though she is determined on a collision . . . Oh, the devil take it, who but a madman would prefer serving with a fleet to being independent?

"Are you watching for flagship signals?" Ramage snapped at Orsini, and a moment later bellowed to Kenton to stand by to rig the staytackle ready to hoist out a boat.

"Is the gunner standing by ready with the salute?" Ramage asked.

This was not the time to hazard a guess, Southwick knew; ships were flashing by like the pictures on those new magic lanterns, and Aitken's voice was already hoarse from shouting helm and sail orders.

Jackson, acting quartermaster and with four men at the wheel so there should be no delay, had long since given up watching the ships as the Calypso weaved among them. He thought momentarily of the jinking snipe they had seen coming down the Medway, and then returned to watching the luffs of sails, making sure that the Calypso kept moving fast: all would be lost, he knew only too well, if she was caught in stays and dropped on board one of the 74s.

Ramage was thinking the same thing: for a moment he imagined a snatch of gossip at the Green Room in Plymouth, with one post-captain asking another: "Hear how that fellow Ramage joined Lord Nelson off Cadiz? Why, drifted into the Victory and boarded her in the smoke, haw, haw!"

And with nine 74s passed, one or two by the thickness of a coat of paint (or so it appeared from the Calypso: the ships were apparently unworried), the Victory still seemed to be as far away through the mass of hulls and masts.

"Bear up," he snapped at Aitken: "We can just scrape across the bow of the Belleisle without carrying away her jibboom."

"If you say so, sir," Aitken said doubtfully, bellowing into his speaking trumpet and snapping a helm order to Jackson.

Topsail sheets and yards braced sharp up, men hauled at the headsail sheets to flatten the curve of jibs and staysails; the Calypso seemed to stagger for a few moments and then pointed even higher into the wind: just enough, Aitken realized, to get clear: but beyond the jibboom loomed yet another 74, black-hulled with white strakes - the Conqueror?Aitken was guessing, but there seemed no way the Calypso could turn to larboard or starboard, luff up or bear away to avoid ramming her amidships.