Ramage reflected that more secrets were revealed in London's drawing rooms than anywhere else: Nepean should know better than to confide in a former minister. They were the worst gossips of all, trying to make up for the loss of power by retailing tales passed on by people like Nepean, who were adept at keeping in with anyone ever likely to get back into office.

'Don't discuss your forthcoming work with anyone, Garret; it's a secret.'

'Ah, yes sir,' Garret said, in what Ramage realized was the preliminary to anything he said, just as other men might take a deep breath, 'but planting potatoes and maize can't be very secret.'

'No,' Ramage agreed, and then added sharply: 'But where you plant them not only could be but is, so guard your tongue.' He turned to the artist, finding he did not like Garret's marketplace oratory, which seemed to be combined with a horse-coper's sharpness. 'Now, Mr Wilkins, how came you to be included in this expedition?'

The artist was young - Ramage guessed he was about the same age as himself. Curly blond hair, skin very white, eyes blue, a thin face but eager. A man who would have to watch the sun in the Tropics.

'Nepotism, really,' he said frankly. 'An uncle of mine is professor in painting at the Royal Academy. I studied under him and through him know several of our leading painters - people like Sir William Beechey, Hoppner, Opie, Zoffany and the sculptor Joseph Nollekens . . . with such friends one does not need much merit!'

'You're very modest!'

'You look alarmed, sir, but I've specialized in painting flora and fauna - and can turn my hand to landscapes, if they're needed.'

Ramage nodded, relieved at Alexander Wilkins's natural assurance. 'If you get bored, you have some unusual fauna in the gunroom!'

Wilkins grinned and glanced at Aitken, as though he had asked the first lieutenant about something and had been told to ask the captain. 'Since you mention it, sir, I would like to attempt a portrait of Mr Southwick. Would you have any objection?'

'Of course not. You are free to do anything that does not affect the running of the ship, and I've known Mr Southwick long enough to be sure he won't want to sit for you when he should be on watch!'

Ramage realized that Wilkins had been quick to spot what must, to an artist, be the most interesting and challenging face in the ship: Southwick, now well past sixty, had unruly white hair that he usually described as being like a new mop spun in a high wind. His face verged on plump, but it was the plumpness of contentment rather than soft living. His eyes were grey, revealing a sense of humour. At first sight he appeared more like the bishop of a rural diocese than the master of one of the King's ships, but the more observant might detect a delight in wielding a huge fighting sword with all the facility that a bishop would handle a crozier.

Aitken took out his watch and looked at it significantly. 'It'll be high water in an hour, sir; if we want to catch the first of the ebb . . .'

CHAPTER SEVEN

The first few miles on a voyage which would take them a quarter of the way round the world were bound to be the most tiresome, Ramage thought. The wind was light from the southwest when they dropped the moorings off the dockyard, and with topsails drawing there was enough strength in it to carry them over the last of the flood: the Calypso's smooth bottom, newly coppered, more than made up for the fact that with extra provisions and three months' water she was floating lower on her marks than at any time since she was first captured.

Ramage disliked sailing down a river on a tide which would be falling before he was a quarter of the way to the entrance: going aground meant the ship would stick for a whole tide. Sailing with the flood, on the other hand, meant waiting a few minutes and the ship would float off. . .

The Medway was the worst of the rivers the King's ships normally navigated: it twisted and turned every few hundred yards between banks of mud and acres of saltings, across which snipe jinked and startled duck quacked, watched by seamen who pictured them plucked and roasted.

Southwick had a chart spread over the top of the binnacle box and held down by weights. The men at the wheel and the quartermaster were not concerned with the compass as Southwick tried to pick out where the channel lay in stretches of water that were greenish-brown and gave no indication of the depths.

Aitken, speaking-trumpet in hand, kept the men busy trimming the sails to every change of course; yards were braced, sheets hauled or slacked. A seaman standing in the chains heaved the lead and sang out the depths in a lugubrious monotone, but everyone knew the ship would be hard aground before anyone could react to shoaling.

'Not far to Sheerness now, sir,' Southwick said. He had long since taken off his hat, and the wind ruffling his white hair once again reminded Ramage of a mop. 'That's Hoo Fort on our larboard beam, and Darnett Ness on our starboard bow.' He gestured to a tiny island marooned in a depressing stretch of sea and which, at low water, would be reduced to a knob amid a vast stretch of smelly mud.

'Once we round the Ness, we pass Bishop Ooze to starboard, and Half Acre Creek joins us. Beats me where they get the names from. Past the Ness we're in Kethole Reach. I wonder if it was once "Kettle"? Then we come into Saltpan Reach. Oh, just look at that. . .'

Southwick delivered one of his prodigious, disapproving sniffs, and Ramage, who was thinking of a woman with black hair in a carriage on the Paris road, gave a start and looked ahead. At least four Thames barges were coming up Kethole Reach. For the moment he could see only the big rectangular sails, a deep red ochre from the red lead and linseed oil with which they were painted.

'Don't give 'em an inch, sir,' Southwick said. 'I know they're beating and we're running, but they only draw about four feet laden. If there's dew on the grass a barge can float! They can sail in to the bank until they see the leeboard lifting as it touches bottom, and then tack with plenty to spare. Don't forget we're drawing sixteen and a half feet aft, sir.'

Aitken had walked over to stand beside Southwick, as though to lend his weight to the master's comments.

'The trouble with you,' Ramage said, keeping an eye on the sails, 'you're afraid they'll scratch your paintwork!'

'Scratch the paint!' Southwick snorted. 'If they're laden with stone, they'd stove in planks, and I'm sick of that dockyard!'

Ramage noticed that the barges had tacked one after the other so they were now sailing diagonally across the river, their hulls hidden beyond the bend. They were on the starboard tack, steering south, each great sprit holding out the sail like a matador's sword extending his red cape.

'Sir, the channel's but forty yards wide here; you remember coming up to Chatham we had to club haul and even then touched.'

Ramage glanced at the chart and said mildly to the master: 'You really mustn't be a bully, Mr Southwick. Just because we're so big, we can't just force barges aground. They've got a living to make. A man and a boy and a dog handling a vessel eighty feet long - more, some of them.'

The barges were in line ahead now. At first glance this was not obvious, because the gap between each of them varied, but Ramage decided to continue for a few more minutes. Aitken was looking worried now but turned away to shout orders for sail trimming as Southwick gave a new direction to the quartermaster - and the wheel turned a few spokes.

'It's soft mud, anyway,' Ramage said dreamily. 'We'd sit snug as a duck until the tide made again.'

'But sir!' Southwick was certain that worrying about the Marchesa had temporarily deranged the captain. 'The sides of the channel slope; if we ground we'll slide and probably roll over as the tide leaves us!'