Jackson hailed from the masthead: 'The Surcouf - that's the frigate, sir: I just made out the name on her transom when she swung to that gust.'

Ramage looked at Southwick with raised eyebrows. 'Don't know of her, sir,' the Master said apologetically. Thirty-six guns and she looks fairly new.'

Ramage closed his telescope with a snap. 'Bear away again, Mr Aitken: steer west by north. We'll just see if they have any more batteries at this end of the Bay. Once we have Pointe des Nègres on our beam I think we'll have rattled the bars loudly enough for today. You've the Surcouf’sexact position on the chart I assume, Mr Southwick,'

CHAPTER NINE

Two nights later Ramage stood on the quarterdeck with Wagstaffe, who was the officer of the deck, as the Juno stretched northwards under topsails only. It was a dark night, large banks of cloud frequently covering three-quarters of the sky and blacking out the stars. The glass was steady but by midnight there could be either a clear sky or pouring rain. Ramage grumbled to himself about the unpredictability of tropical weather.

Once again Wagstaffe called to the lookouts on either bow, and again both answered that there was no sign of Diamond Rock. The young lieutenant was nervous and Ramage was trying to decide if he should tell him not to keep hailing the lookouts unnecessarily: they knew well enough what they were looking for and would hail the moment they sighted it. He now wished he had not taken the Juno so close to the Rock, but the cloud had thickened only in the last half an hour. Anyway he could bear away out to the westward at any moment and be sure of clearing it, but bearing away was just the sort of thing that allowed the damned droghers and schooners to sneak up the coast, pass through the Fours Channel between Diamond Rock and Diamond Hill and get into Fort Royal. They would be impossible to sight from seaward, hidden against the high land.

He would stay on this course. For the next few weeks they were going to be staying close in to Diamond at night and the sooner everyone got used to the idea the better. The cloud seemed to be getting lower and the wind was freshening: there was a sudden chill which gave warning that it was going to rain in a couple of minutes. He turned to Orsini and said: 'Go below and fetch oilskins - mine is on the hook outside the door. And fetch Mr Wagstaffe's and your own at the same time.'

Damn the rain: it would cut visibility to a hundred yards or less. As the Rock carried deep water right up to its side from the south, there was no point in having a man in the chains with a lead. He was still torn between bearing away and carrying on so that Wagstaffe should gain confidence. Then he decided that Wagstaffe's confidence was less important than the safety of the ship. As he turned towards the lieutenant there was a scurry of feet and a man loomed up out of the darkness: 'Rossi, sir, lookout on the starboard bow. There's a sail close under our starboard bow a cable off: I dare not shout!'

'Very well,' Ramage snapped, 'warn the man at the mainchains not to shout either. Get back forward and tell the other man to keep a sharp lookout to larboard.'

He turned to Wagstaffe: 'Send the men to quarters, but no shouting!'

He strained his eyes over to starboard but could see nothing. Now the rain was coming, and he groped in the binnacle box drawer for the night glass. He swung it from ahead to far round on the quarter, but nothing was visible in the darkness and he moved it slowly forward again, resting his arms on the top of the binnacle box. There was a hint of greyness out there, a patch not quite as black as the rest of the night, but he lost it as a squall of rain swept the deck. The shape was distinctive enough - the sails of a schooner on almost the same course as the Juno and perhaps two hundred yards ahead on the starboard bow.

He hurried over to the larboard side, almost knocking over Orsini, who held out oilskin coats. He balanced himself and looked over the bow, hoping the squall would not have reached out that far yet. What he saw was the similar grey shape of another schooner! There was no doubt about it; he had spent too many years allowing for the inverted image shown in a night glass.

He sensed rather than heard men hurrying to quarters. Aitken came up in the darkness, buckling on his sword, followed almost immediately by Southwick. He looked around for the Marine Lieutenant and called him over.

The three officers gathered round him and Wagstaffe edged over to hear as much as he could. There was no time to wait for the Third and Fourth Lieutenants.

'Two French schooners, one on either bow, on the same course,' Ramage said crisply. 'Probably privateers packed full of men. Perhaps even French troops. I think they are waiting for the rain to stop, then the moment the sky starts clearing and they can see they'll try to board us, one on each side.’

Southwick gave one of his famous sniffs. 'They must think we're all asleep.'

'When Rossi spotted the first one, it was more than a cable away. I wonder -'

Ramage broke off: it was not for the Captain of a ship to wonder aloud, but why were these schooners planning an attack on the Juno when they had left the Welcome brig and Captain Eames's frigate alone? Was a convoy expected or did they fear an attack on the frigate anchored off Fort Royal?

He turned to Orsini. 'Run forward, boy. Warn all lookouts not to shout. Tell the larboard lookout there's a second schooner on the larboard bow and stay there yourself, ready to bring back more reports. The lookouts will have lost sight of them in this squall.'

He left his officers standing by the binnacle and walked aft thinking hard. He pictured the two schooners sailing back into Fort Royal tomorrow morning with half their complement on board the Juno and a Tricolour flying above the British ensign. That was what the Governor of Fort Royal intended and what the men in the schooners hoped for. It would, he thought, be a great pity to disappoint any of them.

Yet the risk to the Juno would be enormous if he carried out the plan forming in his mind. If he failed, and was still alive, a court martial would find him guilty of anything Admiral Davis wanted to charge him with. No more risky, he argued, than taking the Juno into action against another frigate. And a convoy must be due . . . He swung round, rejoined the lieutenants and Southwick, and found that the two remaining lieutenants had arrived.

Orsini scurried up to report that Rossi had sighted the starboard schooner again in the same relative position but they had not managed to sight the one to larboard. 'Tell 'em to keep a sharp lookout,' Ramage snapped, 'the second one is there all right.'

He turned to the officers. 'There's not much time, so listen carefully. I want those two schooners to try to board us. I want them alongside, hooked on with grappling irons, because I want to capture them undamaged. The only way we can do it is by surprise. Let them think they are surprising us: they'll range alongside and start boarding on both sides. Then we surprise them: the whole ship's company will be crouching down behind the bulwarks, waiting for the word to repel boarders. That means we have a hundred men on each side to fight off perhaps a hundred in each scooner, but their freeboard is low, and they'll have to climb up our sides. We stand a good chance of succeeding. I want to capture those schooners undamaged,' he repeated.

Swiftly Ramage gave each of his lieutenants his orders, starting with the Marine officer. As each received his instructions he glided away into the darkness to gather his men, check their arms and make sure they had their instructions.

Finally there were only a dozen seamen and Southwick on the quarterdeck with Ramage, apart for the quartermaster and four men at the wheel. Ramage had doubled the number of men usually at the wheel in case of casualties. The dozen seamen were the former Tritons.