Southwick came up the quarterdeck ladder. "A couple of sail, eh? Getting like Spithead round here!"

"Probably a couple of frigates bound for Gibraltar," Ramage said. "Or even a couple of our merchantmen with olive oil and wine."

"Could be," Southwick agreed. "It's safe enough now for them to risk sailing without a convoy."

No convoys, no escorts, Southwick thought. Escorting convoys was the dreariest job that could be given to a frigate, and it was a sign of the times that the Calypso had been sent out to the Mediterranean alone: until quite recently, almost any frigate bound for the Mediterranean from England would have to escort merchant ships; there were usually enough of them waiting to sail to make up a convoy, even if only comprising half a dozen ships. Yet, Southwick reflected, it did not matter whether there were half a dozen or the hundred more usual to or from the West Indies, there was always at least one ship that was a veritable mule, always reducing sail at night and falling behind, no matter what threats were made.

Ramage picked up his telescope and looked at the two tiny specks now coming into sight over the curvature of the earth. He calculated they were not on an opposing course, which was strange: they should be steering the reciprocal of the Calypso's course if they were bound for Gibraltar, since she had left there not long since. No, the two ships were steering more to the north-west: that much was clear from the line of their masts. Perhaps they had a different slant of wind over there, though that would not account for the course they were steering, only the trim of their sails.

Their course, he thought idly, seemed too far to the north-west for any ship not bound for Toulon! But there could be several explanations - they could be British frigates investigating a strange sail out of sight from the Calypso. But even as he watched, both ships began to alter course, coming round to larboard so that they would meet the Calypso. "Pass the word for Orsini," Ramage told Kenton, "and then send him aloft with a bring-'em-near: I'm beginning to doubt if those two are frigates."

Ships of the line usually meant problems: either one of them carried an admiral who wanted to give fresh orders, or the senior of the two captains had some task to be carried out. Well, Ramage thought grimly, he was sailing under Admiralty orders, which should make him proof against being humbugged about by any passing senior officers.

He watched Orsini arrive on the quarterdeck, collect a telescope and jump up into the ratlines in a smooth scramble aloft. If Gianna could see her nephew now, he mused. That was a big "if", since it was by no means certain that she was still alive.

How the years passed. In many ways it seemed no time ago that he had rescued the young and vulnerable Marchesa di Volterra from the beaches of Tuscany, snatching her (with the help of the seaman Jackson) from under the feet of Napoleon's cavalry. It seemed no time at all that he had fallen in love with her (thought he had fallen in love with her, he corrected himself) and back in England the refugee Marchesa had gone to live with his parents. And then later her nephew had escaped from Volterra, a lively lad who had wanted to join the Navy and, at Gianna's request, Paolo Orsini had come to the Calypso as a midshipman and quickly learned seamanship and become a popular young officer.

And then . . '. and then had come the peace following the Treaty of Amiens, and Gianna had decided that she must return to her kingdom of Volterra. His father and he had argued with her, warning her that she would be at risk from Napoleon's assassins, and that the peace would not last. But she would not listen and she had left London for Paris, on her way to Italy. They had heard nothing more of her, and in the meantime Ramage had met and married Sarah, now his wife. Gianna was an ever-fading memory, jogged into existence again whenever he looked at Paolo and remembered. As he had just done. But memories of Gianna were fading, of that there was no doubt; he had difficulty in recalling the details of her face; all that remained was a picture of her personality: lively, at times imperious, warm yet hot-tempered, but for all that very much the ruler of the kingdom of Volterra which, small on the map, yet loomed large in the life of the young girl who - until Napoleon's Army of Italy drove her out - was its sole ruler.

He put the telescope back to his eye. What a long string of memories had been called up by watching Paolo climbing the rigging. How different was Sarah, the wife he had left in England.

It was strange how the Calypso's ship's company knew both women so well. Gianna because many of them had helped rescue her and been on board the ship that took her back to England, and Sarah for a similar reason, only this time the rescue had been from an island off the coast of Brazil.

Yes, those two sail had hauled their wind to meet him, and he was sure they were not frigates: more like ships of the line. A couple of ships making their way from Naples to Gibraltar - or through the Gut on their way to England - would be nothing out of the ordinary; in fact it would be a commonplace, a one-line entry in his journal, merely noting the date, time and names of the ships.

Orsini hailed from the masthead and Kenton snatched up the speaking trumpet to reply. The two sail, Paolo reported, were ships of the line and they had come round on to opposing courses. Their hulls were still below the horizon so it was impossible to identify them.

"Tell him to keep a sharp lookout," Ramage said without thinking.

Paolo of all people would keep a sharp lookout. His hatred of the French would make sure of that. Ever since the end of the brief peace following the Treaty of Amiens, when his aunt had vanished and it seemed only logical to suppose that she had either been murdered by Napoleon's men or imprisoned, he had added bitterness to his hatred. No Frenchman, Ramage suspected, should ever ask Paolo for quarter.

Down at one of the forward guns on the starboard side a group of seamen gossiped, having completed the morning's exercises and expecting any minute to get the order to run the gun in and secure it. They had heard the lookout's hail and Midshipman Orsini's report; they knew that now they would have to wait until the two ships were close enough to answer the challenge.

"We seem to spend 'arf our life waitin'," growled Stafford, a Cockney seaman. "Ships of the line - must be ours: stands to reason, after Trafalgar."

"It'll take more than Trafalgar to change the rules," said Jackson. "We didn't sink every French ship of the line, you know."

"The way Staff tells the story, we did!" said Rossi, the Italian from Genoa. "Not one escaped!"

"We didn't do too badly," Stafford said complacently. "A few frigates got away, but they'll be too scared to come out for months."

He spoke without considering that the other four of the gun's crew were French, royalists who had signed on in the Royal Navy after helping Ramage and his wife Sarah escape from France when war had broken out again.

"Don't underestimate Napoleon," said one of the men.

"Boney wasn't at Trafalgar, Louis," Stafford said contemptuously. "Pity 'e wasn't; we'd have taken him prisoner and led 'im up Ludgate 'ill with a chain round 'is neck and 'anded 'im over to the Lord Mayor."

"He's cunning," Louis persisted. "See how he has gone off to attack Russia ..."

"Well, he don't need a navy to attack them, I must say," Stafford admitted.

"And it means he has time to rebuild his navy," Louis insisted.

"He ain't got much time," Stafford said emphatically. "Yer can't build a ship of the line in six months, 'specially if you ain't got no wood to speak of, and we know 'e ain't."

"He's got enough wood to repair those ships we knocked about," Jackson said. "Patch 'em up and send 'em to sea to interfere with our shipping - that would soon have us hopping about."