The Passe Partout, recognizable because of her lateen sail and in the far distance looking even more like a shark's fin, now seemed as much of a straggler as any other merchant ship in the convoy, although Ramage guessed that Orsini was keeping his men busy with the hundred and one jobs that needed doing - checking over, cutting into proper lengths and drying slowmatch, cutting more wads for the swivels; filling more cartridges - and Ramage knew that meant sewing more flannel cartridges, because one of the items Orsini had taken with him was flannel. Orsini, Rossi, and Stafford would carefully check for wear on the vangs holding the big lateen yard and the sheets and the downhauls at the lower end of the yard. The sail had been lowered for an hour yesterday, so all the holes from the Magpie's musket balls would have been repaired.

Baxter and Johnson, Ramage was prepared to bet, were scrubbing out the after cabin, the master's, which Orsini was proposing to use as his own as he had to be close to the man at the tiller in case of an emergency. The fo'c'sle, too, was suffering from several months of too many seamen being careless with scraps of food. Orsini would be hoping for a captain's inspection of the Passe Partout when they arrived but, Ramage thought ironically, he had never yet tried to give one of those big lateen sails a harbour furl - and it was unlikely the French would have any of the neat canvas gaskets, in effect straps, to which Orsini was accustomed; more likely one of the vangs would be wound round and round the yard in a spiral to furl the sail in a long bundle.

It would be interesting to see if Martin's Medway and Thames background had rubbed off on Orsini. Among the Thames barges, whose long sprits were Britain's nearest to the lateen yards of tartanes or xebecs, the vangs - the heavy ropes which controlled the upper end of the sprits and stopped them slamming about in heavy weather - were almost invariably referred to by bargemen as 'wangs', just as seamen pronounced 'tackle' as 'taickle'. Martin would almost certainly have called them 'wangs' and it would be interesting to see if Orsini had assumed that was the proper English pronunciation. Palan de retenue in French, oste della mezzana in Italian, burdas de mezana in Spanish. They made 'vang' seem a very bald and ugly word; still, in a gale of wind, he would sooner shout 'vang' through a speaking trumpet.

Ramage glanced at his watch and looked round for Southwick. The master was waiting with his quadrant in his hand. There was no need for a midshipman standing by with a watch or minute glass; the sun would 'hang' for many seconds as it reached the highest point in its meridian passage and Southwick adjusted his quadrant to measure the altitude. They were in roughly the same latitude as Ibiza and between Valencia and Alicante, he thought inconsequentially; thirty degrees north of the area in which he preferred to serve, the Caribbean.

The Tricolour streamed out in the wind: at least the breeze had stayed steady since dawn after easing down for the night. Easing down just enough, Ramage admitted, to let the convoy straggle to its heart's content. Now Southwick was, for once, becoming impatient waiting for local noon, for the moment when the sun reached its zenith and its bearing was due south.

Southwick walked over to the starboard side of the quarterdeck and held the telescope of the quadrant to his eye, making sure that no shrouds, rigging, lanyards or blocks obscured his view. He flipped down a shade, looked at the sun through it, and flipped down a second. Then he set the arm against a figure on the ivory scale.

Ramage winked as Southwick glanced across to see if this act of supreme confidence had been noticed. Southwick was in fact doing it backwards: he was in effect saying he knew already the precise latitude in which the Calypso and the convoy were sailing, and in that latitude at noon on this day in the year the altitude of the sun should be a certain number of degrees and minutes measured by his quadrant. By putting the altitude on the quadrant he should (if he was correct) put the telescope of the quadrant to his eye and, as the sun hovered at the zenith in the course of its meridian passage at noon, he should see it reflected in the mirror and apparently sitting on the horizon like a bright red plate balanced vertically on a shelf.

Ramage watched to see if the master's left hand reached up to make a slight (and probably surreptitious) adjustment - an indication that the Calypso was north or south of Southwick's reckoning. He counted three minutes and saw Southwick smile to himself as he lowered the quadrant and walked to the slate which was on top of the binnacle box.

'San Pietro and Sant' Antioco islands are dead ahead on this course, distant about ten miles, sir', Southwick reported. 'Thirty-nine degrees and two minutes of latitude.'

'Very well, Mr Southwick.' He looked round for Kenton who was the officer of the deck. 'I'll trouble you, Mr Kenton, to let fall the t'gallants, and once they're drawing we'll have a cast of the log. Keep an eye on the convoy and pass the word for Mr Aitken and Mr Rennick to come to my cabin.' He gestured to Southwick to follow and went down the companion way.

He had a large-scale chart open on his desk, and Southwick was placing the stone paperweights, by the time the sentry's call announced the arrival of Aitken and Rennick.

Aitken immediately looked at the chart as if hoping to see pencilled lines that would reveal the captain's plans. Instead he saw a fifty-mile stretch of coast running northwest and southeast down to form Capo Teulada and Capo Spartivento at the southwestern corner of the island of Sardinia.

Forming, Aitken realized, one of the great corners of the Mediterranean. Once a ship sailed into the Mediterranean past Europa Point and left Gibraltar astern, Capo Teulada and then Capo Spartivento, forming the southern tip of Sardinia, and Capo Passero at the south end of Sicily, had to be rounded before turning up into the Adriatic or the Aegean, or passing on south of Crete - he could not remember the name of that cape - for those places with magical names: Sidon, Tyre, Acre and the Biblical villages and towns, none of which seemed to be on the coast, as though the early Christians were wary of the sea, despite St Peter being a fisherman.

The four men stood round the desk looking at the chart, and Ramage put his finger down at a point about halfway along the coast.

'There's the Golfo di Palmas', he said to Aitken and Rennick, 'and Southwick assures me it lies just ahead. That island protecting it to the north is Sant' Antioco and the smaller one north of that is San Pietro. The Golfo di Palmas is reckoned one of the best anchorages in this part of the Mediterranean: ships can find shelter because even a south wind doesn't kick up too much of a sea.'

'And for our purposes not too many villages or towers overlooking the anchorage', Southwick said.

'None that need bother us', Ramage agreed. 'I haven't been in here for ten years or more, but last time there were a few fishermen living in huts, a tower or two and churches, and a Roman acropolis. They fish for tunny. Anyway, they need not concern us. Now, with our topgallants drawing we should be pulling ahead of the convoy, and because each master knows we are making for the Golfo di Palmas, that'll seem natural enough: they can see land ahead and those who could be bothered to take the sun's meridian passage will know that it is the right spot.'

'I wonder where they think the convoy is going to after that', Rennick said in an elaborately casual voice, obviously hoping to draw a hint from Ramage.

'Once they've rounded Capo Spartivento the whole of the eastern Mediterranean is open to them', Ramage said blandly. 'Venice, Ragusa, the Morea, Constantinople, Egypt...'

Rennick grinned and said: 'Which would you choose, sir?'