How the situation would appeal to Gianna's sense of humour. Young Paolo had entered into the spirit of it too, as though adding his quota to the confusion while acting as an agent for his aunt - a word Ramage had always associated with old ladies and white hair, bony fingers, sharp knuckles and watery eyes! Gianna was an aunt with raven hair, an oval-shaped face, high cheekbones, eyes that laughed - or, when she was angry, stabbed. Aunt Gianna was slim with an imperious body and jutting breasts that made the ship and the sea fade as he thought about them.

 He pushed these thoughts to the back of his mind. Lopez and the Spanish prisoners could be a problem. The lieutenant had been bubbling with indignation and protests because the three of them were not allowed on deck for some exercise, but Ramage could imagine the expression on Lopez's face if he saw the ship now. All the prisoners, officers and seamen alike, had to remain in ignorance of what was going on, and they would have to be told that they might get their throats cut if they made any noise - an idle threat they would readily believe.

 He went down to his cabin and spent half an hour poring over the Santa Cruz chart. The port was about thirty miles away now and the west-going current seemed to be less than a knot. The wind had been steady from the east for the past two days, strong enough to overcome any land or sea breeze and likely to hold all the way to the coast. The entrance channel to Santa Cruz ran almost south-east and north-west, and any ship trying to enter it now would probably have to be towed in by boats. Pico de Santa Fe would be deflecting the wind down on to the lagoon and port so that it funnelled through the channel and out between the headlands on each side of the entrance, Punta Reina and Morro Colorado.

 He rolled up the chart and put it back in the rack. And that, he told himself sheepishly, is how battles are won or lost: the crazy picture trying to lodge in his imagination had now changed into Captain Ramage's plan. Not a bad plan, come to think of it, but not a good one either. A good one left nothing - or very little, anyway - to chance.

 Wagstaffe would be ordered on board to get his instructions after dinner, and at the same time he would explain everything to the rest of the officers. Then he would muster the ship's company aft and tell them. Not that anyone would need much explanation. Once you knew the basic idea, the rest was obvious.

 After a dinner of mutton, he thought gloomily. It was a pity they had had to kill another sheep so soon, but they had needed the bucket of blood. Apart from cutting the Captain-General's nephew's throat, the sheep was the only source of supply. Antigua sheep must lead hard lives; the meat from the last one was the toughest he had tasted for a long time.

 He took out the Spanish signal book to compare it with the one used by the Royal Navy. The Spaniards must find it hard to communicate at sea; there were no more than fifty signals listed in this one, compared with nearly four hundred in the Calypso's book. Number 7 was a useful one: 'Keep in close order.' He made a note of it, cursing while he retrieved a pencil which rolled off the desk as the ship gave an unexpectedly heavy roll. Number 33: 'Lead the Fleet'; then 41: 'Anchor'; and 48: 'Keep in the Admiral's wake.' Finally he noted number 50: 'The signal not understood although the flag can be distinguished.'

 He put the signal book back in the drawer. By now the Spanish lookouts in the Castillo San Antonio and in El Pilar, the fort on the west side of the entrance to Santa Cruz, would be watching for the Santa Barbara. They would have been told she was due back from her two-week patrol and they would not get excited when they saw her. Like lookouts and politicians the world over, they would see what they expected to see.

 Ramage's steward knocked on the door and came into the cabin to see if the Captain was ready for dinner, the main meal of the day. "That lamb's roasted up a treat, sir."

 "Lamb?" Ramage exclaimed sourly. "That was a very ancient sheep. Did the officers want to buy some of it?"

 "Well, no, sir; they said they was off mutton for a while, and I'd best salt the rest of it."

 "They're wise - and tactful. That sheep had the muscles of a mountain goat and not a spare ounce of flesh on it."

 "The sweet potatoes, sir, " the steward said soothingly, "they're nice and fresh. An' a bottle of wine to celebrate?"

 Ramage stared at him suspiciously. "Celebrate what?"

 "Why, sir, that we're almost in sight of Santa Cruz."

 "Did you think we wouldn't find it?"

 "Oh, no, sir, " the steward said hurriedly, disconcerted by Ramage's surly tone. "All the men are excited, and what with the ship all of a mess I thought perhaps -"

 "You know I never drink at sea."

 "Yes, sir, but I thought this once -"

 "Jepson, stop thinking for a day or two, and if you're a wise man, I'd sharpen the knives so that the meat seems less tough." He glanced up at the clock on the bulkhead. "All right, you can serve now."

 While the Calypso rounded up and hove-to for Wagstaffe to come on board from the Santa Barbara, Ramage sat at his desk writing his Journal. Nine columns had to be filled in, beginning with the date ("Year, month and week day"), and giving wind direction, courses steered, miles covered, the latitude and longitude at noon, and ending with a wide column headed "Remarkable observations and accidents".

 The ship's log, more usually called the Master's log, normally gave a more complete picture of the ship's activities, and Ramage copied the details into his Journal. Under "Remarks", Southwick had listed the morning's activities - "Ship's company employed dirtying decks, making bloodstains, taking the shine off brasswork."

 In the "Remarkable observations" column of his Journal, Ramage wrote the brief note: "Ship's company employed changing character of ship. Santa Barbara in company." The latitude - a few miles short of eleven degrees north - was the furthest south he had ever been; only a few hundred miles short of the Equator.

 He put his Journal away, closed Southwick's log, and took out a fresh sheet of paper. He glanced at the small pile in his drawer, saw the last number and wrote "19" at the top of the page. His letter to Gianna - it could not be posted until he returned to Antigua - was getting long, but he tried to write a few sentences each day so that what she received was more of a diary than a letter, and he knew she read extracts to his father and mother. He liked writing it because it helped sort out his thoughts and ideas, and talking to Gianna through his pen eased the loneliness forced on the captain of one of the King's ships; the man who at sea commanded all that he surveyed, but who also lived in almost monastic seclusion.

 He had described the court martial, but had forgotten to tell her that Summers had been rescued by the Kathleen. The story would sadden her because he had been given command of the cutter just after rescuing her: she had stayed in Bastia while he sailed northward up the Corsican coast to see what could be done about the stranded Belette. Later Gianna, the valuable refugee, had sailed for Gibraltar with him in the Kathleen. Yet he wanted to tell her about Summers; about the tragic coincidence which had made the seaman's rescuer one of the five judges who had to condemn him to death.

 He finished one side of the page and then turned it over to give news of Gianna's favourites, Jackson, Stafford and Rossi. He described how they, and most of the frigate's men, had spent the morning dirtying the decks, but he gave no explanation: that would follow later, when he knew the result, but he could imagine Gianna turning the page impatiently. "Read this to father, " he wrote, "and make him wait a few minutes before telling him the rest of the story, which I hope to write tomorrow."