Southwick said, 'There'll be a lot of men coming on board...'

 'Yes: as soon as they arrive, send 'em below: the Belette’s officers are the only exception - unless we're under fire, in which case I'll need their Marines to help.'

'Are the French likely to be making trouble?' Evans asked.

 'Yes, but probably not at first: they'll be attacking the Tower, I imagine.'

'They could set fire to the ship, sir,' Southwick pointed out.

 'Yes, they could; but soldiers won't know how badly she's damaged, so I think they'd probably leave her for their own people to salvage.'

 'Now, our carronades won't elevate enough to be much use covering the men's escape from the Tower to the wreck; but our Marines can have a bit of target practice. Pick half a dozen seamen who are handy with muskets to help them. Get all the spare muskets loaded and stowed, with powder and shot, somewhere dry and easy to get at, ready for the Belette's Marines.

'That's all: any questions? No? Right, carry on, then.'

 Ramage went down to his cabin after glancing round the horizon. The wind had not increased and Appleby, the young Master's Mate, was keeping the men busy trimming the main and headsail sheets, slackening and tautening as occasional valleys and headlands varied the wind's direction.

 At the bottom of the ladder he acknowledged the sentry’s salute, crouched as he went into the cabin and sat down on his cot, letting it swing as the Kathleen rolled.

 He was enjoying himself. He listened to the rudder creaking on its pintles, and occasionally a sea surging up on the quar­ter hit the tuck of the stern with a thump. His nose reminded him that just below the little cabin was the breadroom, stowed with sack upon sack of hard biscuit and, judging by the musty smell, none too fresh. And also beneath him was the magazine, filled with barrels and bags of gunpowder. It was often said, as an illustration of the pitfalls facing a captain, that commanding one of the King's ships was like living on a powder barrel. A cutter was one of the few types of vessel where this was not just a simile.

 The Tower and the wrecked Belette were hidden beyond another small headland until they were almost abeam of the Kathleen. Ramage was relieved to see the frigate lying roughly as he expected, like a huge whale thrown ashore in a gale. But blast her lieutenant for not mentioning in his report that there was this second headland to the south, barely a couple of hundred yards from the one on which the Belette was now stranded. The chart did not show it, but Ramage saw that after the Kathleen turned to come alongside the wrecked ship, if he made a mistake and overshot slightly, the cutter could easily run on to the second headland before she could bear away to seaward and get clear....

'Mr Southwick!'

 The Master hurried over. 'Make a sketch in the log of how she's lying in relation to those two headlands: you can modify it in detail later. It'll be useful if someone else has to come in to salvage or burn us!'

 Ramage looked at the Tower again. Magnified several times in the telescope, it appeared to be only a few hundred yards away. Sixteenth-century Spanish in design and in good condition, it stood a reddish-grey circular column a short distance from the edge of the headland, its only entrance a hole in the side some fifteen feet above the ground.

 A puff of smoke from the top of the Tower drifted away in the wind, looking harmless enough, then another, followed by several smaller ones. The Belette's crew were busy with  their brass six-pounders and muskets, but he could not see their targets.

 The Tower did not seem damaged, so presumably the French hadn't been able to bring up field pieces - hardly surprising since it would be tough going even for a mule across this sort of countryside.

 Ramage looked again at the Belette herself. As the Kath­leen continued northward, the bearing of the frigate had changed and he could now see she was in fact lying at an angle of about thirty degrees to the cliff, her stern to the northward, just as Probus had said. Her masts, snapped off close to the deck and leaning against the cliff, looked like three steep catwalks.

 What on earth was that on top of the Tower? Pieces of bunting? No, three signal flags! They were lashed to a pole which someone was waving violently, though careful to keep his head below the parapet.

'Jackson! The signal book, quickly.'

 But his days as a midshipman were close enough behind for Ramage to read the flags and remember their meaning. Blue, white and blue vertical stripes; plain red; and a French Tricolor. The first two were signal number thirty-one, which meant 'Ships seen are—'. The Tricolor indicated the ships were French.

 A puzzled Ramage glanced round the horizon, but there was not a vessel in sight, except for the stranded Belette. The signal could mean 'ship' or 'ships' - ah, yes! They were warning him that French soldiers were on board the frigate.

'Jackson, acknowledge that signal.'

The American hurried to the flag locker.

'Master's Mate!' Ramage snapped, 'help with the signals. Mr Southwick! Take over the conn for the time being.'

 Blast the signal book: in trying to explain his intentions to the Belette's captain in the Tower, Ramage was limited to a couple of hundred words or routine phrases listed in the book with the corresponding flag numbers: signals such as 'Furl sails', 'The Fleet to moor’, 'Caulkers with their implements to repair to the ship denoted'.

 Let's hope the Belette's captain has some imagination, Ramagc thought to himself and glanced through the signal book to refresh his memory.

 'Jackson, a yellow flag from the ensign staff — yes, yes, I know: ship the blasted thing, I only want it up for a couple of minutes!'

 He'd anticipated Jackson's protest that it was dangerous to ship the ensign staff while under way because the boom might smash it: that was why at sea the Kathleen's ensign flew from the peak of the gaff.

 It took a moment to get the yellow flag streaming out astern over the taffrail, and he was relieved to see the signal acknowledged from the Tower. As he glanced round to tell Jackson to lower the flag and stow the staff he saw the puzzled look on the faces of the Master and various other men who'd seen it hoisted. Hardly surprising, Ramage thought, because they knew that normally it indicated someone was about to be flogged or hanged. The clue was in the precise wording of its official meaning in the signal book - 'Punishment going to be inflicted'. Its significance ought to be obvious to the men in the Tower.

'Beat to quarters, Mr Southwick. The French are in possession of the frigate,' he added.

 The Master had hardly bellowed the first part of the order before the rat-a-tat-tat of a drum sounded out from forward. The Carpenter's Mate and his crew bolted below to collect their tools and prepare shot plugs; the Gunner's Mate followed him to unlock the magazine and issue locks and cartridges for the carronades; the Bosun's Mate had seamen half filling shallow tubs with water and placing them near the carronades, ready for the slow matches - in effect slow-burning fuses - to be stuck in notches round the brim, the lighted end hanging over the water, for use in case the flintlocks mis­fired. Other seamen scattered wet sand along the deck and down the companionways, so the men's feet should not slip and, more important, the friction of shoes or the recoil of the guns would not ignite any stray grains of gunpowder. Men who had followed the Gunner's Mate down the ladder to the magazine and powder room soon came running up on deck again carrying a hollow wooden cylinder in each hand. Safely stowed in the cylinders were flannel bags filled with gunpowder - the cartridges ready for loading the first broad­side.