"Can you see the brig?" Ramage hissed at Aitken.

 "I just caught sight of her five minutes ago coming clear of the channel, but I haven't seen her since. These damned lanterns .. ."

 Aitken was tense - Ramage could detect that from his clipped voice. The young Scot knew that the success of the whole venture was at this very moment in the balance: one wrong word to the Spanish captain and it would fail; instead of losing the Jocasta, the Spanish would gain the Calypso.

 "Captain! " Ramage called.

 The Spaniard stopped and turned. "Come here, " he said coldly, and then went on walking up to the quarterdeck.

 Ramage braced himself. Insolent self-assurance, that was what he had to convey in the dim light thrown by the lanterns, and he had only a dozen paces in which to achieve it. Just enough to provoke the man, to cause sufficient anger to cloud his judgment and make him act pettishly.

 Now he was standing in front of him on the quarterdeck, staring him straight in the eye: "Me and my mates want our dinner."

 Ramage deliberately slurred the words and the Spaniard, provoked by the tone although he could not fully understand what was said, snapped his finger to attract one of the lieutenants as he said: "Speak slowly. What did you say?"

 "Me - and - my - mates - want - our - dinner. Now."

 The lieutenant hurried up the ladder and stood waiting. "Send the men to quarters, " the captain said in Spanish, careful to keep his voice casual. "Load and run out all the guns on the larboard side. We might have trouble with these men."

 "Brother Ramage, " Aitken said urgently in the darkness. "Brother Ramage - brother Wagstaffe says he's ready for dinner."

 Like the tumblers of a lock clicking as the key turned, Ramage assessed the significance of the captain's brief order to the Spanish lieutenant: the captain was not confident, and he was stupid; he had boarded the Calypso with only two lieutenants and three seamen - because he had not considered there was any danger - and left the Jocasta completely unprepared: until the lieutenant shouted the captain's order the frigate was defenceless, the men gossiping on deck like idlers in a town plaza, not a gun loaded nor a pistol ready.

 "Brother Jackson and you, Staff and Rosey, " Ramage said conversationally, making the lieutenant pause for a moment, "stop our brothers here from shouting."

 Two lanterns were put down on the deck and suddenly there was a blur of movement. The lieutenant gave a great gasp, struggling for air, and the captain suddenly collapsed like a rag doll dropped by a child. A moment later the lieutenant fell beside him, seeming curiously bulky. Then Ramage saw that Jackson had knocked out the captain with the butt of a pistol while Rossi had seized the lieutenant from behind, an arm round his neck and throttling him. Both men had fallen to the deck and Stafford had knelt down, seized the lieutenant's head and banged it on the deck. In the silence that followed the other lieutenant down at the gangway began calling plaintively: "Que pasa?"

 There was no shout from the Jocasta, nor did the three Spanish seamen, out of sight at the gangway, raise any alarm.

 "Both of 'em unconscious, sir, " Jackson reported. "Here, Staff, quick, get some rope and cloths to gag them. Or did you want 'em slung over the side, sir?"

 "No, tie them up. Make sure you're not seen from the Jocasta. Where the devil's a speaking trumpet? Oh, thank you, Aitken. We seem to be getting short of time, so let's be quick now." He put the speaking trumpet to his lips and turned forward to bellow: "Do you hear, there! Calypsos! There's a change of plan! Now then - board the Jocasta! ”

 Immediately the whole starboard side of the frigate seemed to give a convulsive twitch in the darkness as more than a hundred seamen leapt on top of the bulwark, cutlasses waving and all shouting "Calypso! " and swarmed on board the Jocasta.

 As Ramage made for the bulwark Jackson grabbed his arm. "Your pistols, sir! "

 Ramage took them and paused to jam the barrels into his belt, picturing for a moment what would happen if one of them fired accidentally. Then he was scrambling up on to the bulwark and leaping across the gap of black water between the two ships - a gap at the bottom of which a man was already splashing and screaming in Spanish.

 "Calypso! " Ramage began shouting as he landed on the Jocasta's quarterdeck, followed a moment later by Jackson and several other men. But the quarterdeck was deserted; all the shouting was amidships, the bellows of "Calypso" punctuated by the sharp clash of cutlass against cutlass.

 Ramage plunged forward down the ladder to the main deck and found two Spaniards on the steps climbing backwards as they tried to fight off seamen attacking them from below. A slash of the cutlass sent the nearest man collapsing on top of the one below and as he scrambled over the bodies Ramage remembered to keep on shouting "Calypso", the prearranged call so that the men could distinguish friend from foe.

 By now Ramage's eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. He was conscious of a dim, yellow glow from the Calypso's quarterdeck where lanterns still guttered in the light breeze, and he could see the Jocasta's main deck packed with men fighting in isolated groups, a dozen Calypsos against a dozen Spaniards.

 And there were many more Spaniards than he expected: with the three hundred soldiers away in the hills he had assumed only a hundred or so Spanish seamen would remain on board the frigate; little more than a "care and maintenance" party. He paused a moment to have a good look round, conscious that Jackson and some men immediately closed up like a bodyguard.

 How many Spaniards? More than a hundred, but the Calypsos had the advantage of surprise. Yet the Spanish were quickly recovering themselves; they had found cutlasses and grabbed boarding pikes from the racks round the masts, and they were fighting with the desperation of men who knew their lives depended on it.

 Ramage found himself breathing fast, fighting back the excitement that crowded out logical thought. Group against group, man against man: this was useless; he needed his men concentrated, not spread out all over the ship. He took a deep breath.

 "To me! To me! " he bellowed. "Calypsos, to me! "

 In the darkness he sensed rather than saw the mass of men give a spasm of movement as the Calypsos disengaged themselves from their opponents; then a black wall seemed to move round him. "Calypsos! To me! Let's drive them forward and trap 'em. Southwick - get back to the quarterdeck with a dozen men. Now then, the rest of you, follow me! "

 With that he ran towards the Spaniards who, finding the enemy had left them, were hurriedly grouping themselves. He kicked a coil of rope and staggered a few paces as he recovered his balance, but in that instant a dozen screaming Calypsos had passed him and began hacking and slashing at the Spaniards.

 Now only instinct kept a man alive: a cutlass glinted and Ramage managed to deflect the blade sideways and then stab at the frenzied Spaniard wielding it. As the man collapsed Ramage turned to fight off two more Spaniards armed with pikes. There was so little room that they could not wield them properly; they seemed to Ramage like women trying to sweep with brooms. He jabbed at the nearest man and as soon as the point of his cutlass drove home he wrenched it away and swung the blade sideways at the shadowy figure of the other man, who saw it coming but could not parry with his pike nor duck out of the way.

 Ramage was conscious that the Spanish were being driven back; the yelling Calypsos were slowly moving forward, step by step in a deadly saraband where the music was shouts and the crash of steel against steel. As Ramage half turned, looking for his next opponent, a cutlass blade suddenly flashed horizontally out of the darkness and he could not parry in time. It sliced into his stomach and he thought the wound must be fatal. A sharp pain made him gasp but he could still move and he slashed at the dark figure who staggered off balance. The man went down and Ramage, registering that he was still alive, fought on: hack, parry, step over a body, jab, parry yet again. No pistols were firing; there was just the clashing of cutlass against cutlass, blade against ash pikestave, the screams of men mortally wounded, the convulsive movements under foot of wounded bodies.