'One minute to go,' bawled Jackson, dodging round the busy men as he tried to stay within earshot of Ramage and yet still keep an eye on the watch.

He'd overshot by - oh God! As the Kathleen's turn brought the frigate's great squat transom flashing down the starboard side, Ramage found himself looking up at a row of faces, some half-hidden by muskets, and just had time to notice several of the men were wriggling and jabbing with their elbows to get enough room to aim as they were jostled by some officers trying to peer down at the cutter.

Little flashes of flame, puffs of smoke and that ridiculous popping. More shouts of pain on the Kathleen's deck and he was conscious of falling men. A glance back showed that by some miracle the jolly boat seemed to be in roughly the right position. Musket balls whined close in ricochet. Every musket seemed to be aimed at him. The frigate swung round to the quarter as the Kathleen continued turning; then she was astern.

'Mr. Southwick! Back the jib and let fly the foresail sheets! Keep the helm hard down!'

Swiftly the men hauled the jib to windward so it tried to push the cutter's bow to starboard but was balanced by the mainsail and rudder trying to force the bow round to larboard, like two children of equal weight at either end of a seesaw. The Kathleen began to slow down. As she stopped she began to roll, the noise of rushing water ceased, and the popping of muskets was much louder.

Jackson shouted 'Thirty seconds!' just as Ramage looked for the jolly boat.

The wind was drifting it swiftly, the drag of the grass warp turning it broadside on to lie parallel with the frigate and perhaps fifty yards away. Ramage wasn't sure how it happened, but the boat was in exactly the right position, the warp linking it to the Kathleen making an almost perfect crescent superimposed on the smooth water of her wake.

'Time!' bawled Jackson, and nothing happened.

For several moments hope clouded judgment in Ramage's mind; after all that, he thought wearily, surely at least one of the portfires must be still alight, but he felt too sick with disappointment to look again with the telescope for a wisp of smoke. Fifteen minutes was the maximum burning time for a portfire, and fifteen minutes, sixteen by now, had elapsed.

Southwick was steadily cursing in a low monotone; Edwards, white-faced, watched the jolly boat as if stunned; Gianna stood unconcerned, looking astern at the frigate curiously; and Ramage, conscious of yet another fusillade of musketry, was deciding he'd better get the Kathleen under way again before the sharpshooters picked them all off.

It was only then he registered that Gianna was standing near him amid the thudding and whining of musket balls and instinctively gave her a violent shove that sent her flat on her face, hard up against the taffrail. At the same moment Edwards clutched his arm, obviously hit by a shot and Ramage heard a curious clang beside his leg.

Suddenly a blinding flash from the direction of the jolly boat was followed by a deep, muffled explosion, and a blast of air. The flash turned into a billowing mushroom of smoke, and jagged pieces of wood - the remains of the boat - curved up slowly through the air in precise parabolas before spattering down on to a sea across which concentric waves rolled outwards from where the boat had been, like the ripples from a rock flung into a pond.

'Half that amount of powder would do the job for you, sir,' Edwards said quietly.

'Yes. And I hope our friends over there haven't missed the point.'

'The bang was a bit late though, wasn't it, sir?' Jackson said with a grin.

'Aye,' said Edwards, 'but if you'd been a friend of mine you'd have flogged the glass.'

Ramage laughed rather too loudly. Flogging the glass - turning the half-hour glass a few minutes too soon to shorten a watch on deck - was an old trick.

'Never mind, Edwards, it worked perfectly.'

Edwards gave Ramage an odd look as though he was drunk and had difficulty in focusing his eyes, nodded and collapsed at his feet, still clutching an arm from which blood spurted. In a moment Gianna was kneeling beside the man ripping away the sleeve.

Ramage was just going to climb down the Kathleen's side to the waiting boat when Jackson pointed at his sword and offered him a cutlass. Ramage pulled the sword and scabbard out of the belt and flung it down. That explained the curious clang - a musket shot had hit and bent the blade and ripped away part of the scabbard. Still, better to be unarmed when boarding an etiquette-conscious Spaniard than have a cutlass, which was a seaman's weapon, and Ramage waved it away. The fact that he boarded completely unarmed would not be lost on the Spanish.

The boat shoved off and Jackson looked like a lancer in the stern sheets, tiller in one hand and in the other a boarding pike to which a white cloth had been lashed as a flag of truce.

The men rowed briskly and as smartly as if going alongside a flagship, and soon the boat was under the lee of La Sabina. As Ramage looked up at her, realizing it was not going to be easy to board because she was rolling so much, he was surprised to see water running out of the scuppers and down the ship's side. How on earth could she be getting sea on deck?

While Jackson was giving the last orders which would bring the boat alongside, Ramage looked back at the Kathleen and felt his confidence ebbing fast as he saw how tiny the cutter appeared, even though she was hove-to barely a couple of hundred yards away. From the deck of the frigate she must seem about as threatening as a harbour bumboat.

The bowman hooked on with a boathook and Ramage jammed his hat on his head, waited a moment until the boat rose on a crest, and jumped on to one of the side steps - the thick battens fixed parallel, one above the other, up the ship's side. The Spaniards had been thoughtful enough to let the manropes fall so that he had handholds.

He hurried up the first three battens in case the frigate rolled to leeward and a wave soaked his feet, then slowed up to avoid arriving at the gangway hot and breathless. While climbing he decided that if he did not reveal he spoke Spanish he might learn a lot from unguarded remarks. If none of them spoke English - which was unlikely - he'd use French.

Faces lining the bulwark were watching him, and as Jackson shoved off with the boat, leaving him alone on board, for a moment Ramage felt a loneliness verging on panic; he was away from the ship with whose command he had been entrusted; he was - and now he had to admit it - completely disobeying orders; and he was at the mercy of the Spaniards. If they chose to ignore the accepted behaviour governing flags of truce and make him a prisoner (or, more likely, a hostage) Southwick was unlikely to have the skill to drift down another explosion boat and successfully blow off the frigate's stern even if he had the nerve to sacrifice his captain's life.

Well, it was too late to fret about a situation he couldn't change. But as he climbed he realized it was a situation he could have changed.

At last his head was level with the deck at the entry port and he looked neither to the right nor the left as he passed through until he was standing on the gangway. His hat was straight and surprisingly he suddenly felt nonchalant, as if he was walking into the Long Room at Plymouth. With the memory of the size of the Kathleen only seconds old, he was almost light-headed with the ludicrousness of what he was about to demand.

A Spanish officer to his right straightened himself up after an elaborate bow, hat clasped in his right hand over his left breast.

Ramage returned a polite but less deep bow.