But her beauty, her magnificent anger, was too much for him: he dare not hold her tightly and she waved off his restraining hand as if a fly had settled on her fan. Ramage saw Pisano follow them into the cabin flushed and angry.

 Gianna walked straight up to the big table and looked coolly at the six captains, who were so startled and overawed that to Ramage it seemed they shrank in size, ceasing to exist as flesh and blood and becoming six figures painted on canvas, transfixed at a certain moment in time by an artist's brush.

'Who,' demanded Gianna, 'is in charge here?'

 Oh, how he loved that voice when it became imperious! He didn't know whether to watch Pisano, the six captains, Gianna, the lieutenant who stood uncertainly a yard or so behind her, Barrow, whose spectacles had slid so far down his nose that it was difficult to know why they did not fall off altogether, or the Marine sentry, who clearly thought the cabin had been invaded by some bumboat woman.

Croucher reacted first but, completely under her magnetic spell, stood and bowed. 'I - er ... I am the President of the court, Madam.'

'I am the Marchesa di Volterra.'

Her voice and compelling, patrician beauty combined to silence everyone except the Marine sentry, who gasped, 'Gawd-orlmighty!'

 Ramage doubted if Croucher had ever waited for an admiral to speak with more apprehension than he waited for the girL

 'I have no legal right to appear in a court martial trying Lieutenant Ramage for the loss of his ship,' she said in a tone indicating quite clearly she regarded this as a trifling matter, 'but I have a moral right to appear in a court trying him for cowardice if it is based upon the accusations of my cousin.'

 Several people gasped, and Ramage glanced at the whitefaced Pisano who made no reaction: he'd obviously already heard all this a minute or two earlier, outside the cabin door.

 'I believe my cousin has in writing accused Lieutenant Ramage of cowardice; I believe my cousin accuses Lieutenant Ram­age of abandoning my cousin Count Pitti; I believe—'

‘How can you possibly know of this, Madam?' exclaimed Croucher.

'But it is true, is it not?'

The sharp and authoritative note in her voice flashed the question at Croucher like the swift, clean riposte of an expert fencer, and he was slow to parry.

'Well - er, yes, in a way: Count Pisano has made certain charges—'

 'Accusations, not charges,' she corrected him. 'These accusations are without basis. I cannot let loyalty to my family pre­vent me from making certain that justice is done, so this court must know firstly that Count Pisano does not know Count Pitti was wounded: it was dark and although he says he heard him call out, he has admitted to me he does not know what it was he said.

'Secondly, Lieutenant Ramage carried me to the boat because I was wounded, and put me in it. Count Pisano - who came to the boat by a different route - was already sitting in it. So if he had heard Count Pitti call out, he should have gone back himself.

 'Thirdly, after Count Pisano and I were safely in the boat, Lieutenant Ramage went up to the dunes again - I saw him -and called for Mr Jackson. Several minutes passed before he returned, and during that time Count Pisano was impatient because he wanted the boat to leave.

 'Fourthly, when Lieutenant Ramage finally returned to the boat and we waited a few seconds for Mr Jackson to arrive  - we could see him coming towards us — Count Pisano was urg­ing the Lieutenant to leave: in other words, he was urging the Lieutenant to abandon Mr Jackson, who had a few minutes earlier attacked four French cavalrymen and saved my life and that of Lieutenant—'

 At that moment Pisano ran forward screaming, 'Tu sei una squaldrina!' and hit her across the face; then there was a heavy, dull thud and a rattle, and Pisano collapsed to the deck at the girl's feet. The stolid Marine sentry, who had lunged forward and hit Pisano on the side of the head with the butt of his musket, took a pace backwards and stood stiffly to attention, a look of doubt beginning to grow on his face.

 Ramage leapt forward, realizing the Marine's musket blow had been the unthinking reaction of a person horrified that anyone should strike a woman....

'Good man!' Ramage exclaimed and in a moment Gianna was in his arms. 'Are you all right?' he whispered.

 'Yes - yes.' She lapsed into Italian. 'Have I done the correct thing? Have I made a terrible mistake?'

'No! You were magnificent. I—'

'Is the Marchesa all right?'

 Ramage realized that Croucher, trapped behind the table and unable to understand what they were saying, was now so agitated that he was shouting the question, probably for the third or fourth time.

'Yes sir, she says she is.'

 'Right. You—' Croucher said to the Marine, 'and you, you blithering idiot’ - (this to Lieutenant Blenkinsop, who was still standing beside his chair, open-mouthed and sword in hand) - 'take that man down to the Surgeon.'

 The Marine put his musket down on the deck, eagerly seized Pisano by the hair and dragged him a couple of yards across the deck before Blenkinsop hurriedly told him to hoist Pisano by the arms while he took the legs.

 Ramage sat the girl in the witness's chair. Barrow, whose spectacles had finally fallen on to the table, subsided into his seat. This was the signal for all the captains, except the President, to settle down again. Croucher obviously felt he had to do something to regain control of the situation.

 'Clear the court!' he ordered. 'But you stay,' he said to Ramage, 'and you too, Madam, if you please.'

 The Bosun, and the few officers who had been sitting in the row of seats behind Ramage, filed out, while Croucher ordered the lieutenant who had followed Gianna into the cabin to put another sentry on the door.

 Within two minutes the cabin was quiet again. Gianna quickly composed herself and, womanlike, turned slightly so that the captains saw her left profile, and not the right, which was red from Pisano's blow.

Ramage sat down again in his own chair. Except for the sentry's musket still lying diagonally across the white and black squares of the deck - from butt to muzzle it had made the knight's move, he noticed - there was nothing to indicate what had happened. The chessboard had been swept clean of the pawns... who was going to make the next move?

'Well,' said Croucher lamely, 'well...'

 Ramage promptly put himself in Croucher's position, ran through the courses open to him, and was ready when Croucher said:

'... Frankly I don't know how we should proceed now.'

'I am still on trial, sir....'

 The perplexity showed in Croucher's thin, foxy face: Ram­age sensed the man knew he was standing on a powder barrel and was afraid Ramage was lighting the fuse.

 Five minutes ago, the trial was just going as Croucher had planned; but now the Marchesa di Volterra had been assaulted in his own court by his most important witness.

 Ramage watched Croucher's face closely and thought he could detect one unpleasant realization after another galloping through the man's mind: the Marchesa must have a great deal of influence in high places ... What would Rear-Admiral Goddard say and, more important, Sir John Jervis, the Commander-in-Chief ... Did her influence spread to St James's Palace . ..? Goddard would wash his hands of the whole affair - there might have to be a scapegoat....

 And, thought Ramage wryly, his name might well turn out to be Captain Aloysius Croucher. The more he thought about it - and his brain seemed to be working at enormous speed - the angrier Ramage became: although all six captains and Barrow were soaking with perspiration, he began to feel cold -the icy coldness of rage.

He knew he was blinking rapidly and he guessed his face was white; but he felt a violent revulsion against the Pisanos, the Goddards, the Crouchers: he was sick of these men who would go to any lengths - or depths - to satisfy their pride or jealousy. None of them was any better than a Neapolitan hired assassin, who, for a few centesimi, would knife anyone in the back. In fact each was worse, because the assassin made no pretence at being any better than he was.