'Meet her!' Ramage snapped at the quartermaster, anxious that her bow should not pay off too much. He glanced down at the compass. 'Steer south-south-east.'

Jackson was handing him his pistols and he was jamming the clips into his belt after hitching round his sword. Now the American was offering his hat, discarded earlier in case the French spotted it, and he was putting it on top of the binnacle.

'Stand by the halyard of that damned Tricolour,' Ramage told Jackson. 'When I give the word it had better come down at the run!' Having the Tricolour and British ensign on separate halyards saved a lot of time.

It was a legitimate ruse de guerre to use the enemy's flag to get into position to attack, but one was honour-bound to hoist one's own flag before opening fire. Thanks to Juno's temporary role as a French prize, dropping the Tricolour and leaving up the Red Ensign would do the trick and, Ramage thought inconsequentially, Southwick can recover his precious red baize.

He glanced over the starboard quarter and saw that La Créole had tacked again and was in the right position; a quick look over the bow, and there was the Surcouf at anchor, head to wind, her deck and rigging lined with waving men. A couple of dozen Junos were standing on the hammock nettings waving back - just the number of men the Surcouf would expect to see. The rest were crouching down along the starboard side.

'A point to larboard,' Ramage called to Southwick and men trimmed the yards as the wheel turned. Now the Surcouf was fine on the starboard bow and a hundred yards ahead.

The Juno was making five or six knots. In a hundred yards she had to be nearly stopped abreast the Surcouf which should be only a few feet away, giving Ramage time to fire a broadside into her and brace the yards round so they did not lock the two ships together.

Ramage gestured to Jackson to haul down the Tricolour and shouted to the Master: 'Mr Southwick - back the foretopsail!'

He grabbed his hat from the binnacle top and jammed it on his head, looked quickly over the quarter and saw La Créole approaching rapidly on the Surcouf’s other side. She had three hundred yards to go, the Juno seventy-five and the distance was rapidly decreasing.

The big foretopsail yard was being hauled round agonizingly slowly, it seemed to Ramage, so that the Juno was likely to overshoot the Surcouf. Finally it was far enough round for the wind to fill the sail from the forward side, pinning the yard to the mast and trying to blow the ship's bow to starboard. A quick order to the quartermaster had the wheel spinning to counteract that. The Juno was slowing down rapidly now and there was a chance she would not overshoot.

There was nothing more for Ramage to do standing by the binnacle and he ran to join Southwick at the quarterdeck rail. Then he saw why Southwick was staring forward, a man transfixed: the Surcouf was swinging slightly at her anchor, caught by a fluky gust of wind. Her stern swung until she was dead ahead and Ramage was sure it was all over; that fluke of wind meant that the Juno, rapidly losing way and therefore manoeuvrability, would ram her from astern instead of coming alongside, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. The Juno's jibboom and bowsprit would be torn away, the foremast would come crashing down ... Southwick was cursing steadily in a low voice when slowly, agonizingly slowly, the Surcouf began to swing back; swing enough for Ramage to see clear along her larboard side, then swing a little more until, in a minute the gap between them would be exactly as he had wanted it.

He leaned over the rail and shouted down to the maindeck: 'Gun captains - forty yards to go! Fire as we get alongside; sweep the decks!'

Now only the gun captains were at the guns: the rest of the men had rushed to the ship's side to grab a cutlass, pistol, or boarding pike. The men who had been waving from the nettings had dropped down to the deck and armed themselves.

The Juno's stern was now level with the Surcouf’s transom but she still had a little way on. Slowly, slowly, she crept on; now the stem was abreast the French frigate's mainmast, now the foremast, and the Frenchmen who had been lining the bulwarks were scattering across the deck. Several officers were shouting and gesticulating; one had drawn his sword and was waving it: not at the Juno but at his own men. The Juno's yards were braced sharp up at Southwick's command.

Five guns forward fired in quick succession along the Juno's fo'c'sle and maindeck and the rest followed one after the other. Ramage looked over the quarter again for a sight of La Créole: Aitken had timed it perfectly. She would be ranging alongside the Surcouf’s other side in two minutes' time, when there was no risk of any of the Juno's case shot sweeping clear across the Surcouf’s deck and damaging her.

Now the Junos were swarming up into the hammock nettings or waiting at the gun ports poised with pistols, cutlasses and pikes. The Juno had stopped; now the backed foretopsail was drifting her slowly alongside the Surcouf and Ramage watched the gap narrowing: fifteen feet, ten, five, then the men, led by Wagstaffe, were leaping on board, and the gun captains were heaving grapnels at the Surcouf to hold the ships together. Southwick bellowed the order to clew up the foretopsail; in a few moments the Juno was lying head to the wind, alongside the Surcouf.

Ramage ran down the maindeck, snatching out his pistols as he reached the entry port at the gangway. Southwick was shouting after him but he neither heard nor cared what the Master said. He paused for a moment at the gangway, saw the water swirling between the two ships, and leapt on board the Surcouf.

Thirty or more Frenchmen had snatched up pikes and cutlasses and were aft, fighting desperately as Junos tried to drive them back. Suddenly a group of Frenchmen poured up the main companionway, pistols in their right hands, cutlasses in their left. A burst of fire cut down several Junos and the Frenchmen ran through the gap, making for the fo'c'sle.

Ramage aimed at the leading man and fired, saw him fall and aimed left-handed at the next. He fired and missed, and suddenly the whole group turned and ran towards him and Ramage was alone: most of the Junos had their backs to him, busy driving the rest of the Frenchmen aft. Ramage wrenched at his sword and backed a few feet to the mainmast. The first Frenchman, four or five yards ahead of the rest, and the man he had missed with his second pistol, slashed at him with his cutlass; a downward slice which Ramage parried, deflecting the man's blade so that the impetus behind the blow made the man trip. A quick flick of the wrist and Ramage caught him across the throat with the tip of his blade and turned immediately to face another man who was lunging at him with a pike. Ramage jumped to one side and the man, his face half-crazed with fear, drove on, his pike sticking into the mast. A swift blow disposed of him and Ramage turned to face the third man, but suddenly there was a roaring and a bellowing which made the man turn and bolt. Jackson and a half a dozen former Tritons were running to his rescue, and at that moment the Surcouf lurched as La Créole crashed alongside, her boarding party swarming up her side, yelling and shouting.

Ramage was thankful the fighting was now centred round the quarterdeck: that was what he had intended, so that the fo'c'sle would be left clear for the men boarding from La Créole. Several of them carried heavy axes and they ran forward, followed by others armed with cutlasses. While the axemen went to one side of the fo'c'sle, the cutlass men went to the other and began shouting over to the group of men waiting on the Juno's fo'c'sle.

A heaving line snaked across from the Juno and landed on the Surcouf's fo'c'sle. The men began hauling on it and when a heavier line followed they ran to the bow with it, passing it through the large fairlead. Then they began hauling, but it was hard work and finally they began marching across the deck as though dragging a cart. Finally the end of the Juno's anchor cable appeared through the fairlead and the men kept hauling.