"Yes," her father said simply, "but she'll carry the scars of their handiwork to her grave."

The girl suddenly glanced up with a smile, snapped her fan shut and, pointing it at Ramage, said gaily, "You have to sing for your supper!"

Grasping the chance to brighten the atmosphere, Ramage gave a sweeping bow. "Madame has only to name the song, and you'll hear singing that will make a frog envious!"

"The song of the Triton."

"I think, indeed I hope," her father said slowly, "that that song is long and fascinating, and best sung later at dinner. For the moment I wonder - if I'm not being indiscreet, and Mr Yorke will warn me if I am - if we might hear something of your fall from Admiral Goddard's grace: I - we, rather - have a particular reason for being curious."

"You certainly have!" Yorke exclaimed. "May I explain to the Lieutenant?"

St Brieuc smiled and nodded.

"My passengers - a clumsy word for such company - originally began their voyage from Portsmouth to Jamaica on board the Lion, with Admiral Goddard as their host," Yorke told Ramage. "They count themselves fortunate that the Lion and the convoy had to call at Cork to collect the Irish and Scottish ships, because it gave them an opportunity to leave the Lion..."

"A horrible man!" the daughter said with a shudder, and Ramage felt she had as much contempt as dislike for Goddard.

"He is not a gentleman," St Cast said, his jowls quivering. "Despite -"

St Brieuc interrupted so smoothly that it took Ramage a fewseconds to realize thatthe Frenchman was unsure what St Cast was going to say, and for reasons difficult yet to understand, St Brieuc was the one who made the decisions.

"Because of the Admiral's - ah, activities - I had no difficulty in persuading him that despite the Admiralty's orders making us his guests, we would prefer to travel in another ship."

Tactfully put, Ramage acknowledged, and I'd back my guess as to what happened with guineas: the gallant Admiral made advances to Madame de Dinan ... and in all fairness I can't blame him.

"I was able to offer them the hospitality of the Topaz," Yorke said, and Ramage guessed that the original passengers had been given suitable compensation to postpone their voyage or travel in another ship.

These people must be influential enough for Goddard to be worried because they were not travelling in the Lion. The Admiralty would want explanations. That accounted for Goddard's anxiety about the convoy: these people were the "important cargo" and that explained why Yorke hadn't bothered to look round at the rest of the masters...

But who were they and why were they going to Jamaica? St Cast seemed to be an aide or major-domo of some description; the small and birdlike St Brieuc was the man that mattered. But where was his daughter's husband? Already Ramage disliked him because no one could deserve such a wife, and he was jealous - of a husband he had never seen of a woman he had met for the first time ten minutes before. It's been an unusual sort of morning, he thought sourly to himself.

"My own story goes back a little further," Ramage said, "but it's a boring one of jealousy, vindictiveness and obsession."

"We have some experience of all that... It's almost a relief to know we're not alone in our misery," St Brieuc said quietly.

"Please," the girl pleaded, "tell us, if you can."

"Say the word and we drop the subject," Yorke said, "but..."

Ramage laughed and reassured them, but they saw he was rubbing the older of the two scars above his right eyebrow. Yorke remembered seeing him do the same thing at the convoy conference when Goddard ignored him and introduced the other officers. It was obviously a habit when he was tense or concentrating. Yorke watched him snatch his hand away when he saw they had noticed.

"The story starts with my father. He's an Admiral, but not serving now."

"Not an old man, though, surely?" St Cast asked.

"No - simply out of favour."

St Brieuc snorted with contempt. "Politics, always politics!"

Ramage nodded. "Politics, yes; but in a roundabout way because he isn't attached to any particular party. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant admirals of his day, but he had - and still has - many faults. He is impatient, he doesn't suffer fools gladly and he is a very decisive sort of man. He hates indecisive people."

"Hardly faults!" St Cast protested, almost to himself.

"No, but he also had strong and very advanced views on new tactics and signalling which would have revolutionized sea warfare -"

"No wonder he was unpopular," Yorke said wryly. "Pity all those other admirals. After spending a lifetime learning and practising the old-style tactics, along comes a bright new admiral wanting to change everything. You can't teach an old dog new tricks - and the old dogs know it!"

"There is something in that," Ramage admitted, "but then politics came into it."

"Ah," said St Brieuc, as if Ramage's story had reached a point he could fully understand.

"No, not what you think, M'sieur; just the opposite. My family are Cornish, but we have kept out of politics since Cromwell's time, or since the Restoration, anyway. We learned then not to put our trust in princes."

"The Cornish - they are like we Bretons," said the daughter, missing the significance of Ramage's last remark.

"Yes - even the place-names are similar."

"We keep interrupting," St Brieuc said. "Do please continue."

"Halfway through the last war, word reached England that a French fleet had sailed from Brest for an attack on the West Indies. The government had been warned months earlier that it was being prepared, but did nothing about it."

"I remember," St Brieuc murmured.

"The Admiralty could scrape up only a small squadron but they put my father in command and rushed it to sea. Even before sailing my father knew that, outnumbered three to one, his only chance of avoiding a disastrous defeat was to use new tactics."

"To achieve surprise," St Brieuc murmured, "not to use some routine tactic the French admiral would know and be able to counter."

"Exactly," Ramage said, "but it failed."

Both Yorke and the girl said, "Why?"

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. "The manoeuvre was revolutionary, and halfway through it the wind dropped, so only a third of his ships got into action."

"I begin to remember," Yorke said. "I was only a boy. The Earl of Blazey must be your father?" Ramage nodded, and Yorke continued, as if talking to himself. "Didn't lose any ships, by a miracle, but naturally the French escaped. Great row in Parliament... The government shaky ... Admiral blamed and court-martialled ... The government saved ... The row split the Navy ... Something to do with the Fighting Instructions, wasn't it?"

Ramage nodded. "Your memory is good. The two main factors were the old story of sending too few ships too late, and the Fighting Instructions."

"Fighting Instructions?" repeated St Cast. "Are they what they sound like? Orders about how to fight a particular battle?"

"Not quite; not a particular battle, but a set of rules for fighting all battles."

"Like the rules of chess?" asked St Brieuc.

Ramage thought for a moment and then nodded. "Almost, but they don't set down the actual moves each individual ship - or chessman - can make: instead they give the admiral the sequence of moves all the pieces must make together in various circumstances."

"Do you mean, keeping to the chess analogy," Yorke asked, "they set down the moves for the whole game? Once the admiral chooses a particular sequence, he's committed to make every successive move?"

"Yes. Of course they give you various alternative sequences, allowing for differences in the wind, the relative positions of your ships and the enemy's, and so on."