'I'll have the guns loaded but not run out, Mr Southwick. Make sure the tompions are replaced, and the locks covered.'

 Ramage glanced at the signal book again. Trying to convey his intentions to the men in the Tower was like playing some elaborate game of charades.

 'Jackson, get this signal bent on, but don't hoist it until I give the word: one-three-two. As soon as it's acknowledged I'll want one-one-seven ready for hoisting. Have you got them?'

 He repeated the number and saw Appleby, the young Master's Mate, scribbling them on the slate used to note the ship's courses and speeds.

 'Appleby,' he called, 'go round and tell each gun captain on the starboard side that we'll soon be opening fire on the Belette: we'll pass her close but I'll try to wear round slowly. Each gun is to fire individually as it bears. I want to rake her, so aim only at the transom.'

What else was there to remember? On the face of it, raking a stranded frigate manned by French soldiers to drive them off was simple enough: it should take up one line in his written report. Going alongside the frigate afterwards and getting the Belettes on board - another two lines. In fact the whole operation, from leaving Bastia and returning with the men on board, should take up eight lines at the most.

 Yet, if he failed in any particular - touched a rock and holed the cutter, had an unlucky shot from the French send his mast by the board or damaged the ship getting her alongside -he'd face yet another trial. The Navy was a harsh judge. In time of war, with hundreds of warships always at sea, an operation like this had to be routine for a captain. Success didn't enter into it: he either carried out the task or not. If not, then he had to face the consequences, and it was the same in battle:  judgement was based first on the knowledge that luck and determination were almost as important as the weight of a broadside, and secondly the tradition that one Briton was equal to three Frenchmen or Spaniards.

 But if he overshot and let the Kathleen range alongside, and the French soldiers knew how to handle the Belette's guns properly, then he'd be lucky if they didn't sink the cutter - yet no one would normally expect a small cutter armed with ten small carronades to attack a frigate carrying twenty-six 12-pounders and six 6-pounders: it would be suicide and a cutter's captain who bolted for safety would be justified and probably complimented. But if the same frigate was stranded ... that was a different story: she was a wreck, and wrecks were regarded as helpless.

 Yet the Belette was far from helpless: Ramage knew the French would fire the whole of the frigate's larboard broadside into the Kathleen if he took her into the frigate's arc of fire: thirteen solid shot, each more than four and a half inches in diameter and weighing twelve pounds, and three more each of six pounds. For they could use grape shot, with the 12-pounders firing more than 150 grape - iron balls weighing a pound each - and the six-pounders eighteen more at half a pound each.

'You are still on trial...'

 Probus's phrase came back to him: to have the cutter sunk by a wreck: that would just about finish me, Ramage thought: he'd be the laughing stock of the Service: he could hear the gossip – ‘Have you heard? Old Blaze-away's son was sunk by a wreck!'

 Through the telescope he thought he could see faces peering cautiously from one or two of the Belette's gun ports. The French would be gambling he didn't know they were on board: they'd laid a neat trap and were just waiting for him to get within range. But they didn't know he'd already been warned. Moreover, he knew just how far aft the Belette’s broadside guns could be trained, so that until the cutter reached a certain bearing on the frigate's quarter, she would be safe from their fire: it was as if the arc of fire of the guns was a huge fan poking out sideways from the centre of the ship. But if the Kathleen passed into the fan, then it needed only three guns to be fired accurately to smash the little cutter into driftwood.

Ramage tried to do a quick calculation in his head: if the Belette's guns were trained as far aft as possible and he took the Kathleen in at about seven knots and passed a hundred yards off her quarter at, say, forty-five degrees to the frigate centreline and then wore round...

 He cursed his unreliable mathematics and then stopped calculating: if he overshot and could not bear away in time he'd be fired at anyway. Yet he had to get in close - and thus risk overshooting - if the pelting from the grapeshot of his carronades was to do any harm: at much over a hundred yards the little iron eggs would scatter too much: he had to be close enough to ensure they were still grouped together as they blasted their way in through the Belette's transom and, he hoped, cut down the French soldiers in swathes.

 Ramage felt his previous elation disappearing: the task ahead was far more difficult than anyone had appreciated, if a cutter was caught by a frigate at sea she could use her greater manoeuvrability to avoid the frigate's massive broadside, and there was a slight chance a lucky shot from the cutter’s guns would damage the frigate's rigging and allow her to escape. But the Kathleen had no such chance: the wrecked Belette was in effect a fortress, and the French gunners, admittedly firing at a moving target, had another great advantage - their guns were on a steady platform, while the cutter was rolling.

Ramage looked over the Kathleen's larboard quarter: from his present position the Belette was foreshortened: he could see her stern and part of her quarter: it was time to tack, to sail in towards the headland on a course very similar to the one that the Belette had taken when she ran aground.

'Mr Southwick: we'll tack now, if you please.'

The Master roared a string of orders and seamen ran to the jib, foresail and main sheets, while others overhauled the lee runners, ready to set them up.

 Southwick glanced forward along the deck and then aloft to check everything was clear.

'Ready ho!'

He turned to the men at the tiller. 'Put the helm down!'

 The cutter's bow began swinging to larboard, towards the shore. She came into the wind's eye and both jib and foresail started to flog as the wind blew down both sides; then the big main boom swung across overhead.

 'Helm's a lee! ... Let go and overhaul lee runners ... Aft those sheets!'

 Seamen who had let go the starboard sheets for both jib and foresail moved unhurriedly — or so it seemed: in fact they were fast but, being well trained, used the minimum of effort - to the larboard sheets and began hauling them in, bellying both the headsails as the wind once again blew life and shape into the canvas.

 'Look alive, there,' called Southwick. 'Meet her,' he snapped at the two men at the helm. They eased the tiller a fraction to let the ship pay off and gather speed, so that her bow would not be pushed too far round by the punch of the waves.

 Ramage said, 'Thank you, Mr Southwick, I want her hard on the wind.'

 'Tally aft jib and foresail sheets,' bellowed Southwick. 'Aft the mainsheet! Quartermaster - starboard a point!'

 Ramage watched the Kathleen's sharp bow come up into the wind. The alteration was only a few degrees but she responded instantly. From the time they left Bastia until she tacked the cutter had been on a reach, with wind and sea abeam, and she had hardly pitched at all: the waves coming in from the larboard side slid under the ship and thrust at her deep keel, but the wind in her sails balanced the thrust so the cutter slipped along well heeled and with easy grace.

 But now, beating to windward, she was meeting the seas at a sharp angle; her bow rose up and crashed down diagonally on to each advancing line of waves, shouldering the solid crests and smashing them into showers of sparkling spray which flung up over the weather bow and soaked everyone forward of the mast.