They all watched as the mast fell forward, moving very slowly at first, and then crashing in a welter of wood splinters and dust, spreading the sails like a shroud over the fo'c'sle.

"Well, that evens 'em up; two masts each," Southwick grunted.

"We'll tack across their sterns, Mr Aitken: we need to get their names," Ramage said, thinking of the report he had to write. Describing the way that two French ships of the line had been dismasted and left wallowing helplessly alongside each other was going to be difficult enough, and it was straining credulity not to have their names.

The Calypso's sails slatted and banged as she tacked; sheets and braces were hauled home and she settled down on her new course which would take her diagonally across the sterns of the two crippled ships.

Ramage looked round the horizon. It was empty. What he needed now was a British ship of the line to heave in sight. Preferably two. Then they could take possession of the French ships and tow them into port, with the Calypso hovering round like a distracted moth . . . But the horizon was empty; the two ships were going to have to be left.

"Pity we can't take possession," Southwick growled.

"They might be dismasted but they still have their broadsides," Ramage said shortly. "One broadside could leave us like them!"

"True enough," Southwick agreed. "It's just that having two ships of the line lying there like that . . ."

'Ramage nodded but said: "I thought it would have been us."

He picked up his telescope as the two transoms came into sight. Slowly he spelled out the first name and Orsini wrote Artois on the slate. Then he saw the second name and spelled it out, L'Aigle. Neither ship - as far as he could remember - had been at Trafalgar. Which meant that almost certainly they were on their way back to Toulon after a visit to Egypt. Ramage shrugged his shoulders: it mattered little where they were coming from or going to: both had a lot of work to do before they could do anything but drift with wind and current.

Stafford, standing to one side of the breech of the gun and with a better view through the gunport, had seen the collision and had given an excited commentary. Until he had time to dash to the ship's side and look for himself, Jackson had not believed the Cockney, thinking he was indulging in some complicated joke.

What he saw left him speechless. When he found his tongue again he said: "And not a broadside fired! What do we do now -offer them a tow?"

"Yus," exclaimed Stafford. "Tow 'em to Toulon and get a reward from Boney!"

"Are we just going to leave them like that?" asked Louis, after looking through the port.

"I don't reckon we've much choice," Jackson said. "They may have lost their masts, but their batteries are still in place. Every gun loaded, too."

"I know how you feel, Louis," Rossi said sympathetically. "I'd like to go across and set fire to them."

Stafford laughed quietly to himself. "What a story we've got to tell. Two line of battle ships an' we didn't fire a single broadside."

"Bluff, that's what it was," Jackson said. "And carelessness on the part of the French captain. He tried to sidestep us when he saw we were after his bowsprit - and stepped right into his mate!"

"Very careless," Stafford said. "Look what a mess it's got him into."

"Got them both into," Louis said. "Neither would do as dancing masters!"

Two hours later, with the Calypso back on her original course, the two disabled ships were just tiny blobs far astern, their hulls slowly dipping below the horizon. In the frigate the men had stood down from general quarters; the guns had been unloaded, run in and secured. The deck had been washed down and the sand brushed out of the scuppers. The match tubs had been emptied and the slowmatches extinguished, rolled up in coils like light line and returned to the magazine along with all the flintlocks, prickers and cartridges.

Now the men were waiting to be piped to dinner; they were still gossiping excitedly among themselves about the collision and speculating on their fate if the French captain of the ship of the line had not lost his nerve at the last moment to avoid the Calypso. On the quarterdeck, Ramage was thinking of the report he had to write about the episode. It was a bizarre affair, and it was going to sound even more bizarre when reduced to the bare wording of a stylized letter to the Admiralty, beginning with the usual: "Sir, be pleased to inform their Lordships ..."

The report had to go to the Admiralty because he was sailing under Admiralty orders; otherwise it would be to a commander-in-chief, and he would probably be seeing the admiral personally at the time he handed in the letter containing the report.

The watch changed and the third lieutenant, George Hill, took over the deck from Kenton. Hill was an unusual man: debonair, tall and thin, he was bilingual, thanks to a French mother who had married his father, a banker, and then found herself almost completely unable to learn English.

He had a dry sense of humour which Ramage found amusing; he was a very competent officer, and the men liked him. Almost more important, he could make Southwick laugh.

"Have you ever heard of a collision like that one, sir?" he asked Ramage.

"No, never. But they were unusual circumstances."

"Perhaps we were lucky in coming across a Frenchman so sensitive about his jibboom and bowsprit."

Ramage laughed and then said: "If I'd been him I'd have been just as sensitive. If you're a Frenchman this is no place to lose a foremast."

"You'd already worked that out, sir?"

Ramage shook his head. "No," he said frankly, "at the time it seemed the only way of escaping from at least one of the Frenchmen. Not escaping really, of course, since we'd have been pinned by him, maybe even holed. But that would have been better than being trapped between them and pounded to pieces: we'd have lost most of the ship's company."

"Well, we've learned a new trick!"

Ramage held up a cautionary finger. "It's not one we're likely to be able to use again."

Hill grinned and said: "No, sir, true enough; I'm thankful we were able to use it once!"

Both men glanced aloft as the lookout at the foremasthead hailed.

"Land ho! One point on the starboard bow!"

Both Ramage and Hill picked up telescopes. Ramage could just make out a faint blur, a blue-grey hump with a dark cloud just above it. "It's probably the island of Capraia," he said shortly.

Was it a coincidence that the two French ships of the line had passed so close to the island? It was a barren sort of place, admittedly. It might be a good idea to pass close and have a good look: he would look a fool if the French had put a couple of battalions on shore there, though he could not think of a good reason why they should.

"We'll harden sheets so that we can lay the island, Mr Hill."

The third lieutenant gave an order to the men at the wheel and then picked up the speaking trumpet. The men on watch hauled on sheets and braces and the ship steered a couple of points to starboard, heading for an invisible place to windward of the island.

Capraia. From memory, there was just a small fishing port once protected by an old fortress called San Giorgio. And six years ago there was the tragedy of the Queen Charlotte. "Capraia, sir? Why does the name stick in my memory?" Hill asked.

"Pirates and the Queen Charlotte, I expect."

"Ah yes, she blew up, didn't she?"

Ramage nodded. "It's a barren sort of place but pirates love it. As far as I remember, the people living there appealed to Lord Nelson - who was in Leghorn at the time - to send them a ship to get rid of the pirates. His Lordship sent the Queen Charlotte, but while she was on passage and passing Gorgona at the north end of this group of islands she caught fire and blew up, killing more than six hundred men."