The San Nicolas was still leading, forming the sharp end of the wedge with the Salvador del Mundo on her larboard quarter and, beyond, the San Josef. On the nearest side of the wedge the Santisima Trinidad was on the San Nicolas's starboard quarter, with the San Isidro astern of her. The San Nicolas was the key, and he was thankful, although she was an 84-gun ship, she was next but smallest of the five.

He felt inside his shirt for Gianna's signet ring, ripped it from the ribbon on which it hung, and slipped it on to the little finger of his left hand. It fitted perfectly since it was a man's ring and Gianna normally wore it on her middle finger. Curious, he thought, that a family heirloom of the Volterras, handed down from generation to generation, should leave its Tuscan home to spend the rest of Eternity with him at the bottom of the ocean eleven leagues southwest of Cape St. Vincent. She was and would be with him in spirit: thank God not in the flesh.

Gloomy, morbid thoughts but excusable. He almost laughed at the thought that he was really solemnly apologizing to himself. When Southwick had walked away from Ramage he'd wished he'd shaken him by the hand. He couldn't because the ship's company would have seen and guessed it was a farewell. It wouldn't have made them do their jobs unwillingly, but his years at sea had taught Southwick that men fought like demons when there was a chance of survival, but a condemned man rarely if ever tried to fight his way off the scaffold. A man tended to bow to the inevitable - which, he chuckled to himself, was inevitable.

The Master, giving his orders through force of habit, had time to reflect that secretly he'd always dreaded the time when he'd be too old to go to sea. He hated houses, hated gardens, hated even more the thought he'd end his days anchored to one particular house and one particular garden, and would only leave it when he was carried off in a plain deal box (he'd specified that in his will: the usual expensive coffin with bronze fittings was a sinful waste of good wood, metal and money).

After taking up some bearings on the San Nicolas he'd deliberately stayed near the mast. Mr. Ramage was leaning back against the taffrail with that look in his eyes that told Southwick he was taking a last look far beyond the horizon into a world of his own. Probably thinking of the Marchesa. Aye, they'd have made a handsome couple, he thought sadly. Now it'd be left to some young fop to lead her to the altar.

That lad - Southwick found it easy to obey his orders yet think of him as a lad - had been born with all the advantages possible: son of an admiral, heir to an earldom, clever (except in mathematics, which he freely admitted), humorous and with this extraordinary and quite indefinable ability to lead men. With only a few years at sea, barely past his twenty-first birthday (if in fact he'd yet reached it) he'd inherited his father's enemies in the Service and so far had beaten them.

So far - and this was as far as the lad would go. Now he was going to sacrifice his life (to the King's enemies, anyway) in a manoeuvre which would probably fail - through no fault of his - and almost certainly not be appreciated, except by his father and the Commodore. Courage, Southwick thought as he bellowed through his black japanned speaking trumpet at a skylarking sailor, was an inadequate word to describe what's needed to sentence yourself to death.

Jackson fingered the two pistols Mr. Ramage had given him and wondered whether to continue holding them or just put them down somewhere. They wouldn't be needed now - and he'd known that long before Mr. Ramage had yanked them out of the band of his breeches and started drawing on a pad of paper.

The American had begun to guess how it would all end when Mr. Ramage interrupted old Southwick's meal, and knew for certain a moment later when the quartermaster was told to edge up to windward. Jackson was surprised how long it took old Southwick to hoist in that Mr. Ramage intended to do. Jackson supposed it was because Southwick was old; too set in his ways - which was why he was still Master of a ship as small as the Kathleen - to anticipate someone might do the unexpected. And Jackson realized he'd learned that lesson from Mr. Ramage. 'Surprise, Jackson - that's how you win battles,' he'd once said. 'If you can't surprise the enemy by stealth, you can always surprise him in front of his very eyes simply by doing something completely unexpected!'

Well, old 'Blaze-away's' son practised what he preached, though this'd be the last time. Jackson felt no regrets as he looked at Cordoba's ships with the knowledge they would probably kill him and the rest of the Kathleens within the hour. He'd felt no regrets the day he left Charleston as a boy in a schooner trading to the West Indies; no regrets as the coast of South Carolina had finally dipped astern below the horizon. That was nearly twenty-five years ago, and he could still picture it. No regrets either, when he'd been pressed into the Royal Navy, despite his American citizenship. And he knew that given the chance of going back now and steering a different course so that he wouldn't risk dying this Valentine's Day, he wouldn't change anything.

Ramage's feet now ached so much they throbbed and his boots seemed a size too small. The night of fog left him tired, his eyes strained and burning as though the eyelids were dusted with fine sand. At sea the emergencies nearly always came when you were physically at the end of the rope, rarely when you were fresh. He was so tired everything around him had an air of unreality. He felt he was using the Kathleen as a hideous mask to frighten the Spanish. Or - and the thought almost made his giggle - like a frightened little man using stilts to make himself ten feet tall. He thought how in a thick mist the boulders on the Cornish moors looked grotesque and huge, yet in sunshine seemed rounded and small. Mist... grotesque and huge... The words seemed to echo as he repeated them. Mist, fog - smoke! Even the sail of the line looked grotesque (and still did) with banks of smoke from the guns drifting over them -particularly the Culloden when the wind blew the smoke of her own guns back on board until the draught down the hatchways made it stream out of the ports again. But the Kathleen's guns couldn't make enough smoke.

Then he remembered himself as a young midshipman, one of a group secretly burning wet gunpowder to smoke out the rats and cockroaches in their berth. (It had resulted in them all being mastheaded because they'd forgotten the smell of the smoke would drift, and a Marine sentry had promptly raised the alarm of fire.) The idea grew in his mind. But how to make a screen of smoke large enough to hide the Kathleen, using only wet powder? Perhaps the braziers used to dry and air below deck? Light them, toss in some chunks of pitch and then wet powder? It might work with the braziers up on the weather side so the wind blew the smoke across the ship. Anyway it'd probably puzzle the Spaniards long enough to make them hold their fire for a few minutes - and that alone made it worth trying.

And need all the men die? There might be a chance for some of them. Piles of lashed-up hammocks on deck - they'd float and support men. So would all the spare wood the carpenter's mate had stowed below. The lashings of the spare gaff stowed alongside the mast must be cut so it would float clear. He called Southwick and Edwards, the gunner's mate, and gave them their instructions.

Then, as the details of his plan gradually took shape, he realized he wanted a dozen men who were nimble, good with cutlasses, and who'd fight until they were cut or shot down. Who should he choose? Out of the whole ship's company it was only a question of eliminating the less nimble since everyone met the other requirements. Well, it boiled down to choosing a dozen men to die with him, so first he decided on Jackson and the five who'd been with him at Cartagena.