Southwick looked startled. 'Please don't say anything like that in front of Bowen, sir,' he said pleadingly. 'That is just the sort of thing that would appeal to him, an' I'm glad to say he hasn't thought of it yet.'

'You must get Aitken interested in chess,' Ramage joked, knowing that the Surgeon was always after the Master for a game, but one look at the First Lieutenant told him that Bowen already had another victim.

'I said I knew the game before I knew what a good player he was,' Aitken admitted ruefully. 'He caught Wagstaffe, too, and now he's busy teaching Baker and Lacey.'

'It's a good exercise for the brain,' Ramage said airily - he himself was now safe from being dragooned into games. 'I'm sure you all benefit from playing with Bowen.'

Southwick caught his eye. 'Oh, we do indeed, sir,' he said gravely. 'I'll soon be walking the deck making the knight's move - two steps forward and one to the side.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

A brisk easterly wind that probably started life off the African coast, three thousand miles away across the Atlantic, brought the Juno surging through the channel between the south end of Martinique and the north end of St Lucia, her bow wave creaming away and soon losing itself among the white caps. Flying spray sparkling in the bright sun left salt drying like white dust over the decks and guns. The men were thankful for their sennet hats to keep the sun's direct glare out of their eyes.

From several miles out Ramage had identified Martinique with the three high peaks jutting up from the mountain chain running from one end of the island to the other. At the northern end and four thousand feet high, the volcano of Mont Pelée had its peak hidden in cloud, as though cooling off; Les Pitons du Carbet, a series of peaks, the highest of which was only five hundred feet lower than Pelée, had thin cloud streaming away to leeward like lancers' pennons. Only Vauclin, nine miles short of Pointe des Salines at the southern end of the island and 1650 feet high, was clear of cloud.

Southwick lowered his telescope. 'That's Cabrit Island, the big rock off Pointe des Salines. The big hill in the distance almost in line with it, sir: that's Diamond Hill, and you'll see Diamond Rock in a moment.'

Ramage looked through his telescope to the north-west. ‘There!' Southwick said. 'Like a big tooth sticking up out of the sea. More than five hundred feet high, and deep water nearly all round it!'

For a few minutes, before its outline was lost against the high land beyond it, Ramage stared at the magnified picture in the lens. A tooth, yes; the tooth of an old horse, vertical sided and slightly rounded on top, sticking up out of the sea as though Nature had accidentally dropped it, for there were no other islands anywhere near. It was going to be very useful as a navigational mark: as useful for the Juno as Mr Eddystone's remarkable lighthouse was for ships approaching Plymouth. Southwick's chart, admittedly copied from some other master, showed a five fathom patch on the north side where it might be possible to anchor. Otherwise the rock was surrounded by depths of fifty fathoms or more.

He put down the telescope. His immediate task was to find the Welcome brig, hand over her orders from the Admiral and send her on her way. He squared his shoulders and began striding up and down the starboard side of the quarterdeck, hardly noticing that everyone else moved away, for traditionally that was where the Captain of a ship could walk alone with his thoughts, be they of battle or nagging wives, duty or doxies.

Yes, there were many advantages in being a post captain, even though at the bottom of a list, and a frigate was a nice command. He ran a hand along his jaw and felt the skin smooth. The Captain's steward provided hot shaving water, while poor lieutenants had only cold in which to work up a lather. A clean shirt every day and he could change his stock as often as he wanted, knowing that the steward had several more ready, laundered and ironed. If the whim took him he could call for his steward, even though it wanted a couple of hours to noon, and demand his supper. He could insist that the officers wore their hats back to front. At a snap of his fingers he could have every alternate man flogged - or allow them to laze in their hammocks for the rest of the day.

He was king of all he surveyed, as far as the Juno was concerned, and he enjoyed it. Not because of the power he wielded, for that was only comparative (Rear-Admiral Davis had taken only seconds to decide that Captain Ramage should spend the next few weeks watching for rabbits off Martinique), but because it gave him the chance of handling a much larger ship and moulding the men. The Jocasta business seemed to have worried the Admiral, and if he had asked the question about the loyalty of the ship's company off the Lizard, Ramage would have had to give a different answer. Now the Junos were cheerful; many an evening the fiddler was in demand on the foredeck so the men could dance and skylark.

Being made post mattered in small things and in large. The large of running your own ship in your own way, the small of having hot shaving water. When they met the Welcome, the brig would have to heave-to and the lieutenant commanding her would have to report to Captain Ramage on board the Juno. A small thing, but he was damned glad that for once it was someone else who had to scramble down into a boat and get soaked with spray . . . The Welcome brig's lieutenant would not know he was the first commanding officer that Captain Ramage had ordered to report on board. And he was going to be lucky in one respect: Ramage had suffered from overbearing, condescending or pompous captains when he had been a lieutenant and had vowed he would never be guilty of those particular attitudes, unless provoked ... He found himself humming as he reached the taffrail and turned to begin his walk forward again. The deck was confoundedly hot; the warmth seeped through his shoes and both his brow and cheek muscles ached from squinting against the glare off the sea. With luck all the mosquitoes that had swarmed on board in Carlisle Bay had been blown away now they were at sea again.

One thing to be said for the Admiral packing them off after the rabbits was that they had escaped the perils of Bridgetown's social life. A sheaf of invitations had arrived on board from hostesses who obviously relished the idea of hearing London's latest gossip retailed by an earl's son, but he had been spared the worst of it. He had accepted dinner with the Admiral and his wife (it had been surprisingly enjoyable: the Admiral had a lively sense of humour) and pleaded urgent work to avoid the rest. Still, the lieutenants had enjoyed themselves, finding Southwick only too willing to stand an anchor watch. They would have been startled if they knew that on one of the two evenings, while they were wined and dined on shore, the Captain had relieved the Master for a couple of hours so that Bowen could have his game of chess.

All the weeks of training the ship's company, the days of having the ship reek of fresh paint, the days of thrashing to windward out of the Channel and across Biscay, were worth it for a morning like this. Tomorrow, when they went after the rabbits, it might be a different story, but now he was happy and satisfied.

‘Two miles off Cabrit Island, sir,' Southwick reported.

'Can we bear up for the Diamond?'

'Yes, sir, and I'd like to stream the log and then get some idea of the current at the moment. At a guess we have a couple of knots o' west-going current under us.'

'It'll begin to trend north-west and follow the coast now we're rounding the Point,' Ramage said, for Aitken's benefit.

As Southwick gave orders for the log to be streamed and men fetched out the reel and half-minute glass, Ramage pictured the chart of the southern end of Martinique, still fascinated by its similarity to the foot of Italy. They were just rounding the heel and were going to bear away to sail across the inward-curving instep, heading for Diamond Rock, which showed on the chart like a tiny pebble on which the ball of the foot was about to tread.