'Were you ever a fisherman, Fuller?'

'Aye, sir.'

'From where?'

'Born at Mutford, sir; just the back o' Low'stoff.'

Lowestoft, one of England's biggest fishing ports, its entrance almost surrounded by sandbanks which shifted with every gale. Yet as a fisherman Fuller too would have been exempt from being pressed.

'Did you volunteer?'

'Aye, sir. Bloddy Frenchies - a privateer out of Boolong - stole m'boat. T'was only a little 'un an' all I 'ad. I 'ate 'em, sir; they stopped m'fishing for good an' all.'

Ramage looked next at the sallow, black-haired young man of about his own age who came from Genoa. Handsome in a coarse, full-blown way, he was getting fat - no mean feat considering the food served in a King's ship. Alberto Rossi - he was glad he remembered the name, since the man was always known as 'Rosey' - spoke passable English and, next to Stafford, had been the most cheerful man on board.

'How does a Genovesi come to be in the English Navy?'

'I am in a French privateer, sir. An English frigate make the capture. The captain say, "Rossi, my man, you'll get very little food and no pay in a prison hulk, so why not take the bounty and volunteer to serve with me?" He explain the bounty is a special present of five pounds from the King of England, so—' he shrugged his shoulders.

'Don't you want to see Genoa again?'

Rossi tapped the side of his nose with a forefinger, knowing Ramage understood the gesture. 'For me, sir, Genova has the unhealthy climate.'

'What did you do before you became a privateersman?'

'My father have a share in a schooner, sir. A small share. My five brothers and I are the crew. The captain is a bad man: he have all the other shares.'

'And...?'

'He cheat us, sir, and one day he fall overboard and we take the ship into La Spezia. Then we hear by some miracle he is not drown: he swam and is rescue, so we sail very quickly. We sell the schooner to a Frenchman who is wanting to become a privateersman. I stay with the ship.'

'So in Genoa they tell lies about you: that you're a pirate and tried to murder your captain?' Ramage asked ironically.

'Yes, sir: people will gossip.'

There were two men left, a blond with a bright red face and a nose which, broken at the bridge, was vertical instead of sloping, and the dark-skinned West Indian. The blond was a Dane, but Ramage could not remember his name, and asked him.

'Sven Jensen, sir. They call me "Sixer".'

' "Sixer"? Oh yes, five, six, seven. Where do you come from?'

'Naerum, sir. A village just north of Copenhagen.'

'And before you went to sea?'

'Prize-fighter, sir. Win five crowns if you can knock me down in less than half an hour.'

'Did people ever win?'

'Never, sir. Not once. I have a good punch. I call it my "Five Crown Punch".'

So apart from Jackson, Ramage thought, I've a locksmith, a fisherman, a pirate who doesn't baulk at murder, a prize-fighter, and the coloured seaman whom he only knew as Max.

'What's your full name, Max, and where do you come from?'

Max grinned cheerfully; he had been looking forward to being questioned and had the answers ready.

'James Maxton, sir. Age, twenty-one years; religion, Roman Catholic; where born, Belmont; volunteer; rating, ordinary seaman.'

Maxton's recital showed he had obviously served in several ships and knew the headings under which a man's details were listed against the name in the muster book.

'Where's Belmont?'

'Grenada, sir. Across the lagoon from the Carenage at St. George. It's a beautiful place, sir,' he added proudly. 'And we've got big forts to protect us!'

'And before you went to sea?'

'I worked in a sugar plantation, sir, cutting cane with a machete.'

'So you can handle a cutlass, then.'

Jackson gave a low whistle and Ramage glanced at him inquiringly.

'Toss an apple, sir, and he can slice it in half and then cut one of the pieces in half again before it hits the ground.'

'I was born with a machete in my hand, sir,' Maxton said modestly.

So, mused Ramage, these are my six men. All fine seamen, all with another trade - if that was the right word - at their fingertips.

'Very well, we'll go down to breakfast. Watch your tongues - the innkeeper probably speaks some English and will report everything he understands to the Spanish authorities.'

The chill in the morning air warned Ramage that December was approaching, although there was enough sun to remind him that Cartagena was in Spain, with the usual piles of stinking refuse lying about in the streets, a happy hunting ground for flies and beggars and packs of miserable, emaciated dogs. The cathedral bells tolled mournfully as he walked down towards the Palaza del Rey where the main gate through the great walls surrounding the city was guarded by bored sentries who did not bother to challenge him.

Immediately outside the gate was another square with a big rectangular dock on the far side which had only one end open to the sea. A long, low building on the nearer side of the dock had piles of cordage stacked outside it and was probably the rigging store, with the sail loft next to it. At the landward end of the dock was a large timber pond in which great tree trunks floated, seasoning or left in the water to stop the sun's heat splitting the wood. Next to that two big slipways sloped down to the dock and on one of them shipwrights were busy with adzes shaping new planks to replace rotten ones in the hull of a small schooner.

Turning left and walking seaward he came to the Muralla del Mar, the long quay forming the landward side of the great, almost land-locked harbour. As he glimpsed the white crests of waves through the narrow entrance he saw he'd underestimated just how much Nature had given the harbour almost complete protection.

To his right a peninsula of high hills jutted out seaward to form the western side of the entrance, the two highest peaks capped by small castles, with several batteries built into natural platforms at various levels on the lower slopes.

On his left, more high hills thrust even farther out to sea to make the eastern side of the harbour, with several more batteries built into them and a fort almost at sea level covering the entrance.

An old Spanish fisherman in threadbare clothes, toothless, tanned and wizened as a walnut, sat on the ground with his back to the great wall, mending a net, and he nodded amiably at Ramage who realized he could be as useful as a harbour chart. Ramage nodded back and then looked at the Spanish Fleet at anchor: so many masts that the harbour looked like a forest of bare trees, so many hulls they overlapped each other.

Carefully he counted them ... Twenty-seven sail of the line, and twelve frigates. But there had been thirty-two sail of the line and sixteen frigates in the Fleet a few hours before they reached Cartagena, which was the last time Ramage had been able to count them. Jackson was right after all: the missing five sail of the line and four frigates must have been French. Since they'd come so far to the westward but were not here, they must have gone on through the Strait of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic. Had they been intercepted? Unlikely, since there were so few British ships in the area. More important, had they found any of the British convoys from Corsica and Elba?

How long was the Spanish Fleet going to stay in port? And what a Fleet it was! Ramage knew that whatever reputation the Spanish had as fighting seamen, they built splendid warships. There was talk that many of them had been designed by a renegade Irishman named Mullins, but whatever the truth of that, the Fleet at anchor was one of the finest afloat. And the great ship of the Fleet - the greatest in the world, in fact - was the four-decker Santisima Trinidad, the flagship, and conspicuous because of her red hull with its white strakes as much as for her sheer size. She carried 130 guns - some people said 136 - compared with the 112 guns of each of the six three-deckers anchored near her.