Four minutes. The lack of goats was of course the indication that human beings were hiding up that hill: there were goats over on the flat land to the left and to the right, goats variously quartered in white and black, brown and black, white and brown. The kids born three or four months ago were quite large now, and he realized he had become accustomed to their almost human bleating.

Three minutes. In fact, they sounded like shrill - voiced wives nagging their husbands, or children bleating complaints to their mothers.

Two minutes. They were nimble, though, and often skittish, jumping into the air with all four legs stiff, as though playing a game.

One minute. Jackson was watching him now, poised, tensed and with a white cloth ready in his hand. Ramage said, quietly: Three - quarters of a minute . . . half a minute ... a quarter of a minute . . . now!'

Jackson leapt to his feet, waving the white cloth so that all the men in the eight companies - and the French, if they were looking - could see him; then he dropped flat again. With luck he had given the signal without being spotted by dozing sentries and certainly without noise.

Now three men were running forward from each company, each with a blazing torch in his hand. They ran - like nimble goats, Ramage realized, because each had spent the last quarter of an hour deciding his targets and his route - to bushes and withering shrubs, patches of dried grass, to cacti that had fallen years ago and were now long - dried husks - and held the flaming torches against them. Within seconds the base of the parched hillside had a line of flame sputtering, spurting and then driving up it, fanned by the wind and leaping, flames a few inches high growing to six feet in as many seconds. The smoke as the few green bushes were scorched and then burned by dried shrubs drifted up the hill, like the smoke of a continuous broadside; the crackling of burning twigs and boughs increased until it sounded as though a giant was crashing through a jungle.

Then Ramage realized that he could not see the upper half of the hill: clouds of billowing smoke now covered it and already the flames had swept over several yards, leaving an ever - widening scorched black band which was advancing up the hill as though pulled by the flames.

A wind eddy made a momentary gap in the smoke and Ramage caught sight of several groups of men running about quite aimlessly at the top of the hill. He stood up and shouted to his left and then to his right: 'Stand by, men; they might make a dash for it any moment'

Immediately the seamen and Marines knelt behind their piles of stones, muskets ready, aiming up the hill into the smoke, so that it would take only a moment's twitch of the muzzle to take precise aim.

Suddenly a section of the hillside seemed to move and he saw figures weaving about in the smoke as they ran down the hill. As some reached thinner patches of smoke Ramage could see they were trying to protect their eyes, and some had rags tied across their faces, probably to try to filter out some of the smoke before it went down into their lungs. But they were clutching muskets and cutlasses; they were men about to fight, not surrender.

With a fearful deliberation Rennick's Marines fired, the muskets delivering what seemed a ragged volley until you realized that no man fired until he had taken proper aim.

Now no one moved up there in the smoke. There were two dozen or more bodies sprawled just this side of the line of flames: Rennick had let them come down dear of the smoke before allowing his men to fire.

Wagstaffe's company would fire at the next target while Rennick's reloaded - and yes, here were another ragged group of the enemy, coughing and spluttering while they ran, firing pistols wildly and yelling as they waved their swords. Two or three, probably blinded by the smoke, sprawled flat on their faces, tripped by rocks or the roots of burned bushes.

There was a crash of musketry as Wagstaffe's men fired, and only two or three of the enemy kept on running - not, Ramage realized, because they intended to attack a couple of hundred British, but because they had no choice: they were escaping the smoke and flame of the hill rather than braving the fire of the British muskets. Ramage was just about to order half a dozen of his own men to pick them off when more muskets fired from Wagstaffe's company. The men were coolly obeying orders, that much was sure I Lacey's company would take the next group, but if there was a great rush down the hill all the companies would fire. And, Ramage realized, there was probably no one in command of the rebels and privateersmen at the top of the hill; groups were just bolting when they found the smoke and heat became too much.

The line of flames, growing crooked now as stronger eddies of wind drove it on, leaping gaps when sheets of sparks flew into the air, was soon two - thirds of the way up the hill, and the flames themselves were in places six or eight feet high as bushes blazed, their boughs quickly turning to flaming scarecrows.

A few men ran down the hill - too few, Ramage felt; only madmen would come in such small numbers. 'Stand by, men!' he shouted. This may be the - '

But before he could finish the flames were momentarily hidden as scores of men came racing down the hill, like a great centipede moving sideways. Lacey's company fired at once - they were already aiming into the flames, waiting for targets to appear, and Ramage could see many of the leading men falling, followed a few moments later by a score shot down by Baker's company. There was too much noise to shout an order and anyway his own thirty men knew it was their turn after the muskets close on their left had fired.

Jackson's musket kicked and then Stafford's, and both men were tugging at their pistols. Ramage grasped his, cocked them, and waited a few moments as the muskets of the next company - that would be Kenton's men - and then the next, Aitken's, fired almost simultaneously.

The effect was ghastly: the enemy appeared to run into an invisible wall and collapse: barely twenty men were still running, the rest had fallen, some among the flames, others in the smouldering debris this side of the flames. Some reached the unburnt shrubs and grass six or seven yards beyond before being cut down.

Ramage realized that neither Jackson nor Stafford had fired their pistols, and his own were still cocked and loaded, but unused. Please, please, let a man come out of the smoke with a white flag or waving a shirt, or just shouting that they have surrendered: there's no point in continuing this aimless slaughter. Except, he realized, that the Dutch rebels knew they'd get no mercy if they fell into the Governor's hands because they were traitors, and French privateersmen by the nature of their bloody trade expected no quarter and rarely gave it. But piles of dead and wounded lying on a scorched hillside ... this was not the kind of war that Ramage had seen before nor, he realized, queasiness sweeping over him in waves, could he stomach much more of it. Then, before he could do or say anything, another group of Frenchmen came pouring down the hillside, screaming and coughing, rubbing their eyes and yelling defiance, and, as soon as they broke through the line of flames and made clearer targets, he heard Kenton calmly giving fire orders to his company. Again there was a volley of musketry; then, as some of the enemy still ran on, he heard a crisp voice telling a company to open fire with pistols, and a moment later he realized it was his own, and a crackle of pistol shots brought down the rest of the men.

The Calypsos were now busy reloading their muskets, and he could see, just this side of the flames, what seemed a low parapet and then, as a puff of wind blew the grey coils of smoke clear for a moment, that it was built of bodies. An arm waved here and there, a man staggered upright and collapsed, vague movements which made the barrier seem alive - as indeed parts of it were.