But in their excitement the Algerines had not cast off the running backstays; the booms had swung across only a short distance before jamming hard up against them, and the ship continued turning so the wind filling the sails exerted enormous pressure on the booms and through the booms on to the running backstays.

Ramage looked aloft. From the running backstays the pressure was, of course, spreading to the masts, to which the stays were secured, and he could now see that her rigging was slack - or, rather, the result of months of scorching sun drying and stretching it and rain shrinking it. The Algerines, he was sure, had not set up the rigging from the day they captured her.

The fools had gybed her all standing, the fear of all seamen in fore-and-aft rigged vessels, and suddenly the ship seemed to vanish. One moment the sails were there, great billowing masses of canvas distorted by the hard lines of the ropes into which they were being pressed, and the next moment they had disappeared. Instead there was a long, low hulk wallowing in the water, covered with canvas like a shroud, which was rapidly darkening as water soaked into it.

Ramage was puzzled as to why he had been so surprised, because the Magpie had done just what he had hoped: that was why he had taken the Passe Partout across her bow. He hoped that the Algerines, unused to the Magpie's complex rig, would have become so excited in their chase of the tartane that when the Passe Partout suddenly jinked across her bow like a hare being chased by hounds they would spin the wheel over and forget to let go the running backstays on one side and take them up on the other.

'Accidente!' Rossi said, 'the Algerine could do with you as their admiral, sir, just to teach them how to sail our ships!'

Chesneau simply shook him by the hand. 'We are your prisoners again, m'sieu. Our freedom was brief - thanks to you.'

Ramage grinned, and then noticed that they were rapidly drawing away from the dismasted Magpie.

'Perhaps your men would be kind enough to lower the sail: it will take my men another five miles' sailing to find out how it is done!'

Chesneau barked out orders and the Frenchmen, putting down their muskets and pistols and grinning cheerfully, hurried to the halyard and vangs.

Ramage caught Jackson's eye and pointed to the muskets, and within a minute Baxter and Johnson were collecting up the small arms and taking them aft to the little cabin.

Lying stopped half a mile to leeward of the Magpie, the Passe Partout looked as innocent as a vessel waiting in a calm and giving her men an hour or two to try their luck with fishhooks.

Ramage and Martin watched the hulk of the Magpie. It was, Martin commented, hard to see the wreck for the Algerines: the ship looked more like a floating log covered with busy ants. Already they had cut away the sails to clear the after part of the ship, and now they were chopping at the shrouds holding the broken masts alongside the ship.

'They're in a panic', Ramage said, 'and either they do not have an effective captain or he was killed.'

'Certainly Jackson's swivels were quite effective - he found a few bags of musket balls and used them instead of roundshot.'

Ramage turned to Martin in surprise. 'That was smart of him. Where were they?'

'Actually the French master mentioned them to Orsini: he thought they'd be more useful than roundshot. Jackson managed to get twenty-five into each swivel.'

'One hundred and fifty musket balls in every broadside! Did he...'

'Yes, sir: as the Magpie went across our stern, they managed to fire each swivel at her quarterdeck.'

That was typically Jackson: he did not bother his captain with the question of whether or not to substitute musket balls for roundshot because he knew the answer and just went ahead and did it. And as a result it was unlikely that a man had been left alive abaft the Magpie's mainmast.

'There go the remains of her mainmast and the topmast', Martin commented.

'And the mainboom and gaff, Ramage said as he watched the spars float away.

'Now they're chopping like madmen to get the foremast clear.'

'Yes', Ramage said cheerfully, 'and very soon someone over there is going to realize they have nothing left with which to jury-rig her.'

Martin gave a boyish chuckle. The mainboom could have been hoisted on shears and used as a jury mainmast, and the gaff could have made an emergency foremast. 'They must have spare sails stowed below, but I can see the deck's swept clean - yes, look over there, sir', he said pointing to the east. 'All that floating wreckage must be her smashed boats and the spare booms stowed alongside them.'

'Well, they've a long row ahead of them', Ramage said sourly, and Martin stared at him.

"We don't ...?'

Ramage shook his head. 'Here, take the glass and give me an estimate of how many men you think there are still alive on board.'

Martin balanced himself, adjusted the focus of the glass and began counting in fives and had reached a hundred in less than half a minute. The next hundred took longer, and after two hundred and fifty he was counting in pairs.

Finally he gave the glass back to Ramage. 'Three hundred and seventy at least. Round the wheel the bodies are almost piled up.'

'And the actual complement of the Calypso?' Ramage asked, to ram the point home.

'Two hundred and twenty.'

'And we have forty French prisoners from the semaphore station.'

'I see what you mean, sir.'

'No, you are just doing sums, 220 of us against 370 Algerines and forty-eight French. You don't realize that every one of those Algerines regards you and me - in other words people who don't worship their god - as infidels. When they capture an infidel they kill him or make him a slave. They do not surrender to infidels; they'd sooner die, which is why you can never capture an Algerine. If they're outnumbered, they'll blow the ship up or fight to the last man.'

'So we leave them?'

'We leave them', Ramage said. 'If they'd caught us, by now they would be flaying us, or using us as live targets for their muskets, or chopping off limbs with those damned scimitars of theirs.'

He did not tell Martin that when the Calypso arrived, the Magpie would be battered until she sank. There were too many galleys rowed by hundreds of captured Dutch, Danes, French, British, Italians, Spaniards - anyone who did not come from Algeria or Tunisia and fell into their hands - for any Algerine to be shown mercy.

The Calypso was a mile away now, tacking yet again in the long zigzag against the wind. He could imagine Aitken and Southwick running from one side of the quarterdeck to the other with their telescopes, trying to see exactly what had happened, and no doubt the lookouts aloft were receiving their share of abuse for not supplying more detailed answers.

Rossi was proud of the way he had steered the Passe Partout and was just telling Jackson and Stafford for the third time how he and the captain had turned the tartane under the Magpie's flying jibboom when the Cockney said impatiently: 'While you was leaning comfortable against the tiller, Jacko and me and Baxter and Johnnie was usin' the swivels to knock these h'Arabs down like starlings on a bough. 'Ow many you reckon we got, Jacko?'

'Twenty with each gun', the American said soberly.

'Madonna! These Saraceni die of fright, eh?'

Jackson explained how, at the last moment, the French master had produced the bag of musket balls. 'Nice and rusty, too', Stafford said. 'Teach them h'Arabs to chain up our chaps in galleys.'

'And the Frenchies were cool enough, too', Jackson said. 'Each of 'em was firing aimed shots with muskets and pistols, just like Mr Ramage told 'em.'

'Well, I thought we was all done for', Stafford admitted. 'I could feel me anchors draggin' fer the next world. Surprisin' how quick yer can fire a swivel when you 'ave to.'