'Yer uncle never missed them rahbbets, sir', he said. 'Bein' as 'ow 'e'd have given me permission ter snare, net or shoot any rahbbets I wanted, though 'e'd have drawn a line at pheasints or partridge. But poachin' 'em was wot gave 'em the aroma, sir; catchin' 'em legal like would have taken the taste away, like bilin' 'em too long.'

Now Lewis was reporting to the landowner's nephew and, Ramage reflected wryly, everyone in the Calypso was taking part in a kind of poaching ...

'Larboard side, sir, startin' abowt ten feet outboard of the jeers; the yard just split like an 'ead o' fresh celery. The split be fourteen feet three inches long, clean as a whistle, none o' the wood lorst. Glue up a treat, it will; bolt every foot, then six or eight fishes 'bout eighteen feet long, and wooldin' overthe 'ole thing and the yard'll be stronger than afore it broke.'

'You deserve a brace of pheasants, Lewis, and I'll tell my uncle!'

'Ah, 'ave 'em 'anging in the barn a week an' they'll roast up a treat.'

'When can I expect to have that yard across again?'

Lewis scratched his head and then, holding his fists out in front of him, began sticking out one finger after another. Finally he had all the fingers and thumb of his right hand and the thumb and two fingers of his left.

'What be the time now, sir, then?'

Ramage looked at his watch by the light of the binnacle lamp. 'Just before midnight.'

'If I can have some men to help haul the two sections of the yard so I can true 'em up before gluing and bolting, and then help me and my mates turn it while we's driving the bolts and then fitting the fishes - well, ten or twelve hours, sir.'

'No signs of rot?'

'None, sir; clean as a whistle.'

'Why did she go?'

'Reckon the wood just got brittle from the tropical 'eat, sir. Sun's always beatin' on the top of the yard. And French wood, sir. Must have been an old yard from another ship, 'cos it's in one piece. A new one at the time this ship was built would be two trees scarphed together; they'd do a vertical scarph in the middle. Short o' long timber, they are.'

'Anyway', Ramage said thankfully, 'you can glue, bolt, fish and woold without having to cut scarphs?'

'Easy, sir. Just so long as the sea don't get up and set those two pieces rollin' about the deck!'

Ramage nodded and Lewis went back down the ladder. How long had it all taken? Perhaps twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, on a calm Mediterranean night, the Calypso had been changed suddenly from an efficiënt fighting machine - capable, for example, of sinking every ship in the convoy with the ease of Lewis and his ferret chasing rabbitsout of the burrow and into nets, to dispatch them with a sharp blow across the back of the neck - to a wretched hulk that could not work her way to windward or manoeuvre against much more than a laden merchant ship.

Well, Aitken and Southwick had been complaining that patrolling off the coast of Languedoc was a dull business but now, although they might be short on fighting, they could hardly complain there was little to do: summoning up a convoy of fifteen French ships by juggling with a giant chess board, a bout with a Gulf of Lions gale, and now the foreyard crashing down around their ears should keep them occupied for a while.

Ramage was mistaken. Southwick was back on the quarterdeck five minutes later, bustling because he tended to bustle after any unusual physical exertion, as though it wound him up like a grandfather clock.

'Shall I sway up the spare maintopsail yard in the meantime, sir, and set the spare foretopsail on it? Just in case we meet something.'

Having thirty or forty extra seamen working round the foremast sending up the spare yard while Lewis and his men started on the broken yard would slow up everything.

'No, we'll replace that foretopsail just as soon as they get the spare up from the sailroom, but after that we concentrate on Lewis and his mates. It's a case where juryrigging is likely to delay proper repairs by twelve hours.'

'How long does Lewis want, then?'

'He says ten or twelve hours.'

'By noon, eh? Well, he's a reliable man, sir, and if that's his estimate we can rely on it.'

'I hope so. Will you keep an eye on the bosun while they bend on the new foretopsail?'

'Set her flying, sir, once we're ready?'

Ramage looked astern at the merchant ships, found he could not make out more than one or two, and once again searched the horizon with the nightglass.

'No, leave it furled until we have the foreyard repaired and swayed up: these damned mules astern are so slow we'llprobably have to put a reef or two in the maintopsail just to avoid leaving them too far astern.'

Southwick gave one of his typical sniffs. He had a dozen or more, each of which had a different tone and meaning. This one, Ramage knew, was reserved for situations of which Southwick disapproved but was powerless to change.

A fast frigate in a stiff wind would be hard put to keep these fifteen merchantmen in any sort of formation; closing and firing shots across their bows would not hurry them up; shouted threats of putting a roundshot into them would result in a shower of Gascon, Breton and Norman abuse. So, since the Calypso was for the moment a disabled frigate, and far from there being a stiff wind there was only a mild breeze, the only thing was to be thankful that of all times the foreyard decided to split, now was the most convenient, because the Calypso was hardly rolling at all, and repairs should be comparatively easy.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

At dawn, when the Calypso's ship's company were at quarters, guns loaded and run out, ready for any enemy that might emerge as the darkness vanished, Ramage slowly walked forward, stopping to talk with the guns' crews.

He found these 'dawn promenades', as Southwick called them, a useful way of communicating with the men. Sometimes a seaman had a genuine grievance which only the captain could settle, but because he was a shy man or feared upsetting the first lieutenant to whom he was supposed to go first, he would say nothing, and that sometimes meant he would become morose, surly or a troublemaker with a chip on his shoulder.

Ramage's habit of walking casually from one gun to another, often with some comment on the weather or the shape of a headland if they were near land, put him physically close to most of the men. He knew them well by name; he knew the family history of many of them; he had been in action with all of them.

Sometimes a hint would come from Jackson, or perhaps from Bowen, the observant surgeon. It meant that often Ramage, pausing at a gun to ask one man if the rheumatism was now gone, would be able to talk to the actual man who had a real or imagined grievance or problem.

These usually multiplied after a sack of mail arrived on board: letters from home seemed to bring as much misery as joy: interfering neighbours relating gossip, money problems, pregnant wives, sick children, aged parents - a seaman could rarely do anything to help any of them because he was a quarter of the hemisphere away, or about to sail from Britain.

It was a chilly morning but a clear sky warned of a scorching day. Dawn was coming fast - soon they would beable 'to see a grey goose at a mile', so the lookouts would then go aloft and the rest would stand down from quarters. Ramage had not passed the mainmast before he discovered one thing: the men who had been on shore at the semaphore station for several days were still bubbling over about it: to them walking on grass once again, being able to compete with each other to see who could hurl a stone the farthest, even swimming from the beaches (though few of them could actually swim, most of them enjoyed ducking their heads under) had been like special leave.