'And,' Ramage said, 'they lost knowing that their admiral was useless, their broadsides counted for very little and that one British seventy-four boarded and captured one of their eighty-fours and then did the same to a 112-gun ship!'

'Precisely,' Nelson said. 'When the rest of the Spanish Navy hears the details of the battle, there'll hardly be a single man, whether cook's mate or admiral, who won't secretly believe deep inside him - and that's where it matters, that's where the fighting's lost or won - that one British ship equals two Spanish. The first battle of the war has given them indisputable evidence.'

'So from now on,' Ramage said, 'the Dons are likely to feel beaten before they set sail!'

'I hope so!' Nelson said soberly. 'I hope every man, from the King and the Minister of Marine downwards, will think twice before sending the Spanish Fleet to sea - and then order it to stay in port. That'll give us a chance to deal with the French and the Spanish ships a chance to rot.'

The Commodore took an envelope from his pocket, gave it to Ramage, and said he would return later.

Ramage took the envelope but, preoccupied with Nelson's words, did not open it at once. If the Spanish Fleet had reached Cadiz safely (and they might have done but for the gale which blew them out into the Atlantic, allowing Sir John time to catch them as they struggled back) they might have gone on up to Brest, driven off the British squadron blockading the French Fleet and let it out, and sailed for England ...

But they met a gale, then they met Sir John's Fleet. And they lost four ships. Yet at least two of those ships, Ramage realized with a start, would not have been captured by the Commodore unless the Kathleen had delayed the Spanish van by ramming the San Nicolas...

It'd taken him all this time to realize that. Southwick had known and the men had known - he recalled Southwick's message from the Kathleens. But Lieutenant Nicolas Ramage had not known. And yet in a way he had. Not by thinking of it as a complete sequence of events: he hadn't steered the Kathleen for the San Nicolas with the idea of trying to defeat a Franco-Spanish armada against England. He'd done it to slow down Cordoba's van. But, he realized, the greatest archway ever built was made of small bricks and rocks, and each one of them depended on the others, and they all depended on one, the keystone.

He broke the seal of the letter. It was from one of the Admiral's staff. The Lively frigate was leaving for England with the Commander-in-Chief’s dispatches for the Admiralty, and Lieutenant Ramage was to return in her as a passenger if he was well enough to be moved. In view of the fact the frigate was well below her complement, Lieutenant Ramage was to name twenty-five of the best men from among his former ship's company and send them on board with the Master. For Lieutenant Ramage's personal information, the letter added, another frigate was leaving the Fleet shortly for Gibraltar and then returning to England with the Marchesa di Volterra, and if Lieutenant Ramage wished to write...

Which meant, he realized with a joy which drove away all thoughts of the pain in his head, he'd be waiting to welcome her to English soil. And if the Spring arrived at St. Kew before an Admiralty letter bringing him orders, they'd walk together among the blossoms and the fresh green grass, alone for the first time without the threat of urgency of war tapping them on the shoulder.