The fat man looked startled, then began roaring with laughter. Keeping one eye on the Calypso as the tartane caught a good puff of wind and heeled as she increased speed, he slapped the helmsman on the back and said: 'Well, that's one way of asking for a bottle of wine! Take the tiller and keep her on that course, Alfonse, while I get some up. And then m'sieu can tell me what he wants of us.'

Ramage, realizing he was unarmed and dressed like a Frenchman, knew that only a flourished pistol would convince this jolly fellow that his ship was now captured. He turned and shouted forward in English: 'Martin! Come aft with Jackson and send Orsini below to secure the other prisoners!'

Looking back at the master again Ramage saw he had gone white; his face was sagging and his brow speckling with perspiration. The welcoming grin had vanished; in its place was raw fear.

Ramage held up a reassuring hand. 'There need be no bloodshed; we are British. I am a British officer.'

The French master gestured helplessly at the convoy and then at the Calypso. 'She has the French flag', he protested weakly. 'This is a French convoy.'

The flag: that was a mistake. A genuine one, but if the Admiralty heard about it they would not like it. It was a legitimate ruse de guerre to fly the enemy's flag providing that before opening fire you dropped it and hoisted your own. Well, on the other hand the Calypso had not opened fire and had not threatened to - and, Ramage thought angrily, becoming furious with himself for bothering, this fellow General Bonaparte had not been fussy about protocol when he suddenly attacked half the countries in Europe, the Kingdom of Volterra included, without reason, pretext or warning.

'I am sorry', Ramage said. 'We will take over your ship peacefully and providing you do not try to resist, no one will be hurt.'

By now several men were walking aft from the fo'c'sle, all obviously just awakened, and followed by Martin's men.

'Tell them', Ramage told the master, 'tell them no harm will come to them unless they try to retake the ship. Where is your arms chest?'

The master pointed down the companionway near his feet. 'In my cabin. Six muskets and six pistols.'

'And powder and shot for those swivels?'

'There is a small locker at the forward side of my cabin. A half-cask of powder and a net of shot, and powder and shot for the small arms. Wads, too.'

Ramage nodded as he counted up the Frenchmen. Paolo had been right: only six, and that included the cook. And the lateen rig was so simple that they needed no more. But for the moment only Paolo, Rossi and Jackson understood the working of the lateen rig.

The sun was scorching. For a few minutes the big lateen sail gave some shade on one side; then the Passe Partout had to tack again, zigzagging through the convoy as Ramage watched for the slightest shift in wind direction that might give the Passe Partout an advantage in the struggle to beat up to the Magpie.

The privateer was a puzzle. Ramage had expected her to swoop on the rear ships, the ones right at the stern of the convoy and therefore dead to windward of the Calypso, but the schooner was simply tacking back and forth across the wake of the convoy, as if biding her time.

Had her master a better plan? Ramage thought for a few moments, putting himself in the position of the master of the British privateer suddenly coming across a French convoy escorted by one frigate. He would go for the biggest ship, but she was the Sarazine and the nearest to the frigate.

Very well, he would wait for darkness. Work his way round the convoy - not difficult with a following wind - and sneak in quietly to board in the darkness, having the Sarazine captured and sailing out of the convoy before the Calypso could do anything. If the frigate tried to recapture the Sarazine, then the Magpie would board another merchantman, put a prize crew on board and sail her out of the convoy. Ramage knew that if he commanded the Magpie he would try for three prizes and hope to get away with two, expecting the third to be recaptured by the frigate.

In the meantime the Passe Partout had to work her way up to windward and get close enough to the Magpie to establish communication. But how? At the moment the schooner was staying far enough astern of the convoy for the Passe Partout, if she could only get close enough to the Magpie, to hoist a white flag without any of the French ships seeing it. Would the Magpie think it a trap? Hardly, because there was no way a little tartane in open water in bright sunshine could trap a heavily armed privateer schooner. A pity merchant ships and privateers did not have the Navy's numerary code, because then Ramage could hoist a series of numbers which the Magpie could read out of the signal book as a message.

Again he nodded to Rossi, who had spent the last quarter of an hour at the helm; again the Italian leaned against the tiller; again the Passe Partout's bow swung across the horizon, to put the wind on the other side and bring the lateen yard slamming across as she tacked.

Martin, Orsini and Jackson were busy with the swivels. They had found ten roundshot for each of them and a copper-lined half-cask of powder in the locker forward of the master's cabin filled with cartridges. The wads were damp, so Martin had spread them out in the sun to dry before loading the guns. Several pieces of slowmatch were also hanging up to dry like lengths of stiff line - the guns were fired by slowmatch wound round linstocks; not for them the complication (and expense!) of flintlocks. Nor, from what Martin reported, the luxury of clean barrels: the bores of all of them were rusted, and they had trouble unblocking the touchhole of the forward one on the starboard side.

By now there were only two merchant ships in the convoy remaining between the Passe Partout and the Magpie schooner. Scared of the killer in their wake, they had set every stitch of canvas; and Ramage used the tartane's master's telescope to satisfy his curiosity. The topgallants of both merchant ships had lines of mildew on them, especially in bands where the wide canvas gaskets had held them furled against the yard, with every shower or downpour keeping that strip of canvas wetter for longer.

The next tack took the tartane close to the last ship, and Ramage could see two or three men aft watching, one holding a telescope and no doubt curious why a tartane should be making for the schooner. The fact that their escorting frigate was staying to leeward at the head of the convoy might be something of a surprise but more likely it was providing an incentive for the ship to catch up with the Sarazine. Anyway, they would have seen the tartane go up to the frigate.

Ramage carefully watched the Magpie, estimated her speed, assumed she would hold the course that was now taking her diagonally across the stern of the convoy to the southwest, and tacked the Passe Partout again.

Rossi was quite at home with the tartane; he had commented about them twice to Ramage, indicating he had served in them during his youth, nominally spent in Genoa.

He had searched the fo'c'sle and found half a parmigiano of an age, size and hardness, so Stafford claimed, making it suitable for repairing the stonework of St Paul's Cathedral. Certainly it withstood some violent cutlass blows from Rossi, who quickly found an axe and, later, a rasp in what was obviously the ship's tool chest. Parmigiano, he swore, was proof that there must be pasta somewhere in the ship and the ingredients for making some kind of sauce, and Ramage had given him fifteen minutes - until it was obvious that his skill was needed at the tiller - to find it. He had then discovered some spaghetti in a cask in the galley which, he declared, had not been completely eaten by weevils and from which he could make them a good supper. Several suppers, he had added, obviously hoping that would draw from the captain an indication of how long they would be in the Passe Partout.