Ramage took off his coat. It was a chilly morning but the coat was sodden with perspiration. And watching his own hands trembling he knew he wasn't a born gambler. He could sit back and plan the gamble, work out the odds and place his bet. But he lost his nerve just before the card turned face up and, more important, there was no thrill, no pleasure in it; just fear.

And the fear was like a fogbank: it penetrated everywhere and extended an unknown distance. It could last an hour or a week, and no man caught in it could drive it away.

CHAPTER FOUR

Southwick watched Ramage's hand. Both men were bending over the chart spread on the table in Ramage's cabin and the Triton had long since picked up the men from the cutter and got under way again to pass the entrance to the Beaulieu River, where four years earlier, the brig had been built under old Henry Adams's supervision at Buckler's Hard.

As he waited for Ramage to speak the Master wondered if old Adams was still alive. In view of some of the rubbish they were hammering together these days and calling ships, he reflected, it's a comfort to be in one that old Harry kept his eye on. Planked with oak cut from the New Forest, her ironwork wrought at the works at Sowley Pond just near the shipyard— aye, there wasn't much to worry about as far as the Triton's hull was concerned. And give him another day or two with the masts, spars and rigging and there'd be no worry on that score either.

Ramage's hand moved to pick up the dividers. After opening them against the latitude scale he 'walked' them across the chart from the Needles to Ushant, the island just off the northwestern tip of France. He held one point of the dividers on Ushant and as he spoke Southwick noted the hand was rock solid: not a tremor to reveal nervousness or excitement.

'It's a hundred and eighty miles from the Needles to Ushant.'

'Aye, sir, and I'll put my money on the wind staying northwest.'

Ramage nodded. 'The cloud's well broken up now, and we carry the ebb for another four or five hours.'

That hand ought to be trembling a bit, Southwick thought enviously. The lad's been given orders tough enough to challenge an experienced frigate captain, and has just got under way in circumstances that'd daunt an admiral backed up by half a dozen companies of loyal Marines.

Who'd have thought of forcing a crew to make sail by cutting the cable and giving them the option of drowning or carrying out his orders? Now he's starting off on a four-thousand-mile voyage with a sullen and still mutinous crew. Why, he can't even be sure he'll see the night out: there's precious little to stop them from slitting his throat as soon as it's dark and running the ship across the Channel to Cherbourg or Le Havre—neither's more than about sixty miles away, and they'd have a soldier's wind ...

'It's just as likely to veer as back,' Ramage said. 'So we'll take a chance it stays northerly, and make our departure from the Lizard, which is...'

He walked the dividers again.

'... just about a hundred and fifty miles.'

'Seems a pity to lose all that southing since the wind's fair.'

'I agree; but it'd be madness to round Ushant too dose. Privateers, a couple of frigates... there's bound to be Frenchmen hovering off there to snap up something like the Triton. They know despatches for the squadrons are sent by cutters and such like. And they know small vessels like to cut the comers, instead of keeping well out.'

'Suppose so,' Southwick said gloomily. 'But the Lizard to Ushant's nearly ninety miles: we have to sail that much extra —more if the wind backs south-west and heads us.'

'Since we've more than four thousand to cover altogether, logging another ninety shouldn't be too much of a strain.'

'No, I didn't mean that,' Southwick said hurriedly. 'I was thinking of the time. Could cost us a day; make us a day late finding the squadrons off Brest and Cadiz.'

'Well, trying to save a day might end up with us in Brest as prisoners, and the Triton a French prize.'

'There's that to it,' Southwick admitted.

'And by the time we're off the Lizard,' Ramage said casually, 'we'll know a bit more about the crew...'

'You mean, if they're still mutinous we could put into Plymouth?'

'Yes—and they're less likely to do anything mutinous while they know the English coast is just to the north, and as far as they're concerned there's more than a chance of us meeting a frigate—or even a sail of the line—coming over the horizon bound for Plymouth or Spithead. But if they knew the French coast was only a few miles to leeward...'

'Quite so,' Southwick agreed, 'but if I was a mutineer I'd have a go tonight: I'd sooner make for Cherbourg or Le Havre than Brest... Still, I admit I never did like taking Ushant too dose. With gales springing up in a couple of hours, that's the most iron-bound coast in Christendom. Just look at it.' His finger jabbed the chart where, between Ushant and Brest, dozens of crosses marked shoals and individual rocks.

Ramage snapped the dividers shut.

'Watch and watch about for you and me tonight, Mr South-wick. You can have the Master's Mate with you. I'm glad Appleby managed to catch that cutter in time.'

'You'll have Jackson, I hope, sir?'

'Yes. And I must get down to making up the general quarter, watch and station bill. I wonder how many ships have gone through the Needles without one?'

Southwick laughed as he took some courses off the chart. 'So far we haven't needed it, thanks to your axemanship!'

'I'm glad they didn't fell me,' Ramage said as he left the cabin and went up the companionway. Walking up and down the weather side of the quarterdeck he was glad of a few minutes of peace: it was good to be at sea again.

The Triton, helped along by the ebb, had been making all of ten knots as she surged past Hurst Castle at the western end of the Solent and began to butt into the swell waves from the open sea. But the wind was offshore and the sea did little more than kick up a popple on top of the swell so the Triton's bow only occasionally sliced off the top of a crest and sent it showering up in a cloud of spray.

Looking around him—nodding to Appleby, who tried to disguise his nervousness at being left alone at the conn while the captain and master went below, and did not bother to hide his relief when the former came back on deck—Ramage could sense rather than see the men were sullen. Most of them, anyway. The former Kathleens no, they weren't sullen; more likely they were frightened. Poor devils—the Tritons could murder the lot of them in the dark.

Soberly he counted up the men he could rely on, whatever happened. First came Southwick, then Jackson, the cockney Will Stafford, the Suffolk fisherman Fuller... yes, and the Genoese, Alberto Rossi, and that sad Welsh bosun's mate, Evan Evans. And probably Maxton, the West Indian. The young Master's Mate, Appleby, had only been on board a couple of hours and seemed nervous, but since he was only waiting for his twenty-first birthday to take his examination for lieutenant his loyalty was certain. Eight men...

And the more he thought about it, the more he thought Southwick was right. Tonight the French ports of Cherbourg and Le Havre would be to leeward: mutineers could find either without being able to read a chart... If he was a mutineer, it'd be tonight or never...

Forward on the larboard side, standing casually between the first and second carronade, Jackson and Stafford were looking over towards the English coast, talking in low voices and without moving. To an onlooker they were apparently just taking a last look at the land before the sun set.

'Wotcher fink, Jacko?'

'If they try anything, it'll be tonight.'