Of course the word buccaneer was used now to mean someone akin to pirate, although in great - grandfather's day it was generally someone who, before there was a proper Navy, held a commission from the King or a governor allowing him (encouraging him, in fact, because the expense was entirely his) to wage war against the enemy. Drake, Ralegh, Hawkins - buccaneers all.

Aitken was looking at him, apparently puzzled. What had be just said? The first lieutenant had been about to leave the cabin and he had gestured to him to wait, and he had said something, as an explanation. But now he could not remember what it was, so it could not have been important 'Boarders,' he said for the sake of saying something. "Exercise the boarders as much as you can. Get the grindstone up on deck and make sure the cutlasses are honed and the boarding pikes sharp. And boats, we must exercise hoisting out boats . . .'

'You had mentioned that, sir,' Aitken said patiently.

'Oh yes,' Ramage said, 'so I did. Very well, I think that's all for now.'

Aitken stood up slowly, hoping the captain would resume what he had started to say, but he had a faraway look in his eyes, and Aitken knew this was not the time to fetch him back from wherever his memories had taken him.

CHAPTER FOUR

The darkness immediately before dawn was depressing, chilly and damp, and Ramage pulled his boat cloak round him, hating the way the wool smelled because the salt soaked into it had absorbed the humid night air. In three or four hours the scorching sun would make him envy the seamen wearing only light shirts and thin trousers. But now, as they all waited for dawn, it seemed as cold as the English Channel. It wasn't, of course; he was now so accustomed to the Tropics that any time the temperature dropped below what would be a scorching day in England he felt frozen.

Baker was the officer of the deck; every ten minutes he called to the six lookouts posted round the ship, one at each bow, one amidships and one on each quarter. He called to them individually and received the same answer, that nothing was in sight, but this constant hailing was not because Baker was nervous or there was any particular danger: it was one way of ensuring the lookouts stayed awake. Staring into the darkness was peculiarly tiring; it was fatally easy to drop off to sleep, even though standing up. And sleeping on duty was a serious crime; not the mere fact of dozing but because in those minutes (even moments) of sleep an enemy could close in or a rocky shoal come into sight. One dozing man could lose the ship and kill every one of his shipmates.

Ramage accepted that lookouts might doze; his own days as a midshipman were not far behind him, and he could remember the tricks he had been reduced to as he tried to stay awake. Wetting your eyelids and facing the wind - that revived you for a few minutes, but never for long enough. Rocking back and forth on heels and toes, shaking the head like a wet dog, flexing the knees, knuckling the eyes and brow .. . But best of all was the officer of the deck checking every man every ten minutes, and that was in his night orders. Perhaps other captains ordered it, although he had never been lucky enough to serve with one. But never in the years he commanded a ship had he needed to flog a man for sleeping on duty.

He imagined the earth slowly turning towards the sun, bringing dawn to start the day here, bringing twilight, to end the day there, somewhere at the far end of the Mediterranean. In Cornwall, dawn had arrived four hours ago; by now it would be broad daylight with St Kew bustling: breakfast would be over and what would Gianna and his parents be doing? The old admiral would probably be astride a horse, cantering out to inspect a field of growing wheat or call on a sick tenant; his mother would be deciding the day's menus. Gianna - perhaps Gianna would be writing to him, another page in the long letters they wrote like diary entries.

The sun already shining over England (or hiding behind cloud) was lifting across the Atlantic and it would soon be here. The theory was interesting and there was no doubt - unless the world stood still - that it would occur in practice but Ramage thought crossly, for the moment it was damned dark and damned cold here, just north of the Dutch island, with a ten - knot breeze and all plain sail set and, from the sound of it, the drummer buckling on his instrument to beat to quarters. Every ship of the Navy in wartime met the dawn with its men at general quarters; the ever - widening circle of daylight could reveal an empty horizon, but it could also reveal an enemy ship, even a fleet, within gunshot.

He listened to the ship noises, so much a part of life that normally one did not notice them: the creak of the great yards overhead and the occasional flap of a sail, like a deep sneeze:

the rumble of the barrel of the wheel as the men turned the spokes and the tiller ropes tightened or slackened, pulling the tiller below deck one way or the other, transmitting direction to the rudder to keep the ship on course and make that distant, ugly noise as gudgeons and pintles grated against each other, the metal lubricated only by the sea.

There was the creaking of the ship herself as she rolled and as the swell waves moved under her: creaks caused by slight movements of planking, of futtocks, of keel and keelson. Here, light aft, the intricate framing of the transom made more noise than in a British frigate, presumably because of some difference between British and French shipbuilding practice. The brief but deep noise of the trucks of the guns moving an inch, the distance the rope stretched when the ship rolled heavily. The lighter creak of rope shrouds stretching under 'train, a curious noise which Ramage always thought rheumatism would make if it had a noise of its own. The animal squeak of the sheaves of blocks as rope rendered through them; blocks that the boatswain and his mates had missed greasing when they went round with the tallow bucket, ii though with all the hundreds of blocks in use it was a never - ending job.

The hiss of the sea, of the white horses riding crests, was 'ore pronounced in the darkness; occasionally there was a dump and splash as' the bow caught an odd wave and sliced off the top in a shower of spray, sometimes a sudden movement in the sky as a seabird wheeled in the darkness, probably startled as it slept on the surface of the water. Sometimes Hidden slight flappings on the deck showed flying fish had landed on board and the officer of the deck usually gave permission to a lookout to grab them and put them in the fish bucket kept by the mainmast for the purpose.

Ramage gave a start as the drummer began rattling away, and below decks the boatswain's mates began their ritual, the calls shrilling with the noise that earned them their nickname, 'Spithead Nightingales', and followed by the bellows and threats to the seamen to get them out of their hammocks.

And once again the Calypso's ship's company went to their stations for battle: decks were sanded, guns run out (they had been left loaded, their muzzles protected from spray and rain by ornately carved wooden tompions), cutlasses, pistols, muskets and pikes were issued to the men, the Marines formed up under Rennick's sharp eye (Ramage had once heard a Marine grumbling that the lieutenant was a vampire who could see in the dark).

The sea was slowly turning a dark grey: because of a trick of the light the black, oily, fast - moving waves were slowing down and seemed higher, and one could see them approaching as the sky lightened almost imperceptibly towards the east.

Ramage saw that Southwick had come on deck and was standing at the forward side of the quarterdeck, his hands on the rail, looking forward. Of all the men on board, the master had most invested in what daylight would reveal today: he had predicted that they would see the land of Curacao broad on the starboard bow, distant fifteen miles, while on the larboard bow would be the much smaller island of Bonaire.