The men roared with laughter, Orsini hastily translating for the Frenchmen.

'Remember this', Ramage shouted to make himself heard above the increasing wind and the laughter, 'that schooner is expecting to give us a broadside or two and then board.

'Now you know that, forget it. Forget everything except the job you now have. Men at the sheets, braces and downhauls: that's your entire life for the next half an hour - if you want to live. You men at the swivels - fire as fast as you can but as accurately as possible. Your target will always be the Magpie's quarterdeck if your gun will bear, otherwise her topmasts.'

He lapsed into French. 'You new allies are the sharpshooters. Try and pick off the magpies and jackdaws on the quarterdeck, particularly anyone that looks like an officer.'

He looked at the Magpie and realized that the new sound of popping was musket fire from the Arabs swarming out along the Magpie's bowsprit and, he noted, getting in each other's way. She was less than a hundred yards astern and spray was slicing up from her bow as she raced up to the Passe Partout.

'One last thing', Ramage shouted, 'and make sure you translate this, Orsini: don't waste a single shot. Aim and fire. If you can't aim properly, wait for a target to present itself.'

The Calypso had tacked again, weaving in and out of the ships of the convoy. Neither Aitken nor Southwick would ever guess what he was originally going to try to do with that damned convoy, and if they had any sense they would grab the Sarazine and Golondrina and make for Gibraltar.

Southwick would eventually visit Gianna, of course, and he would tell her what little he had seen of the last few minutes of her sweetheart and her heir, and Jackson, Rossi and Stafford. She would mourn but she would be proud, even if the Admiralty made a fuss about him leaving the ship.

He mopped his face with his handkerchief, not because he was dripping with perspiration but because he wanted to wipe away the black thoughts. And, being human, he could be permitted some black thoughts when nine Britons and six Frenchmen in a tiny tartane found themselves about to be boarded by a schooner crowded with a couple of hundred Algerine pirates, whose shrill shouts and screams he could now hear, a noise of wild animals - how he imagined wolves chased their quarry.

He looked around the Passe Partout. The six swivels were loaded; men stood at them with linstocks round which were wound smoking slowmatch. The Frenchmen were settling themselves down in comfortable corners with their muskets, arranging powder, shot and rammers to hand.

Chesneau, having talked to each of his men, was now waddling aft to join Ramage and Rossi right aft. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the Magpie. 'The owners of that schooner allow the captain even less paint than mine do for the Passe Partout!'

'I don't think they've had her long', Ramage said. 'You see she has damage down the larboard side? I think that was done when they captured her from the British.'

Chesneau shivered. 'I hope your countrymen had quick deaths; otherwise they are still chained in the galleys.'

'You do not have the build for rowing', Ramage said, 'so perhaps we had better not be captured.'

'I would kiss the Pope's ring and never dodge another tax to avoid that', Chesneau said, 'but our fate is only a couple of ship's lengths astern now.'

'Yes', Ramage said, looking round at Rossi, who was watching the leech of the Passe Partout's sail, a cheerful grin on his face as Stafford shouted some teasing obscenity at him.

'You are very calm, M'sieu Ramage; you even smile.'

'I'm smiling because I am about to do something of which I do not entirely approve, M'sieu Chesneau.'

'Indeed? You have left it late in life to acquire a new bad habit!'

The Magpie was perhaps forty yards astern now and the black marks appearing in the Passe Partout's sail were being made by musket balls.

'It may not be a bad habit; it's just one I avoid as much as possible.'

'You intrigue me. What are you going to do, M'sieu Ramage?'

'Gamble, M'sieu Chesneau: Les jeux sont faits!'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Admittedly it was a bet for which he would be hard put to find a taker, whether among the bookies on Newmarket Heath or the pallid gamblers at White's or Brooks's or Boodle's. He was betting the life of the fifteen motley crew of the Passe Partout on a single chance: that the couple of hundred or so Algerines who had captured the Magpie only a few weeks ago were still bewildered; that the towering masts and running and standing rigging of a gaff-rigged topsail schooner was such a complex mass of spars and rope, to men used to simple lateen sails hoisted on stubby masts, that they were certainly unused to it and probably still nervous.

He stood close to Rossi and gave his instructions. The tip of the Magpie's flying jibboom was less than forty yards astern; the musket balls were beginning to rattle and Jackson, having been warned by Ramage, was waiting the signal to fire his swivels into the screaming and gibbering mass of Arabs on the Magpie's bow while Orsini held back his Frenchmen.

'This ship', Ramage said to Chesneau in a conversational tone, 'she handles easily?'

'Like a dancer', the fat man said. He was pale now and perspiring but Ramage sensed it was due to more of a feeling of helplessness than fear.

Thirty yards to the tip of the Magpie's jibboom, and it would be only a matter of moments before some of the Passe Partouts were hit by musket balls.

Ramage pointed at Jackson. 'Fire, when you're ready!'

He pointed at Orsini and repeated the order.

The guns thundered out at twenty yards: by the time the smoke cleared it was ten yards, the great jibboom high above them.

Then he turned to Rossi. 'Round we go!' and with that helped the Italian push the big tiller over to larboard so that the Passe Partout suddenly turned to starboard, jinking right across the Magpie's bow and missing the jibboom by only a yard or so. Chesneau, the moment he saw what they were doing, jumped over to add his weight to the leverage on the rudder and as Ramage tried to look over his shoulder at the Magpie, he saw the great schooner with its towering masts and topmasts already passing astern, at right-angles to the Passe Partout's course. As her quarterdeck raced by, the tartane's swivels were grunting again and spurting smoke, slamming 3-pounder roundshot across her decks while the unhurried firing of muskets showed that the Frenchmen were picking their targets.

The Passe Partout's sheets were eased as Martin hurried his men to trim the sail on the new course, with the wind now broad on the larboard quarter.

Ramage stood back from the tiller, saw the lateen sail bellying nicely, noticed that Jackson's swivel gunners were already sponging and ramming, and saw the Frenchmen hurriedly reloading their muskets as they scrambled into positions from which they could fire at the Magpie when she turned after them.

The schooner herself, Ramage then realized, had been taken completely by surprise: not one of her broadside guns had fired as she raced across the Passe Partout's stern - yet she should have given the tartane a devastating raking broadside: that had seemed to Ramage his greatest danger when he weighed up the idea several minutes ago.

But now the schooner was beginning to turn; already her masts were separating as she turned to starboard to wear round after the Passe Partout, but even as she turned Ramage felt something clutch at his heart, because she was a beautiful vessel.

The wheel had obviously been put over and the great ship was turning on her heel, the big booms slamming over from the starboard side to the larboard as she began to come round after the tartane and her stern passed through the eye of the wind.