All very convincing, he told himself, and now you can think of very little else but a woman you have only known for eighteen hours and will never see again.

He slid down from the gun and, clasping his hands behind hisback, walked towards the fo'c'sle. Well, in at least one way Sarah had done him a good turn: she had, quite unwittingly, forced him to think clearly about Gianna, and the thinking about her had brought the knowledge that his feelings for her had changed. Not died, but changed. He now accepted, too, that since the walls of religion and their inheritances would keep them apart, there was no question of him going to his grave a bachelor because his love was forever out of reach. St Kew needed a landlord and his parents deserved a grandson.

Noblesse oblige again, of course! He had not thought of the phrase for years, but now Sarah had mentioned it in another context, did he want to be the eleventh and last Earl of Blazey, after his father died? It was one of the oldest earldoms in the kingdom. He was an only child and by not marrying and not having a son, did he want to see the end of it?

He turned and made his way aft. It would soon be time for him to start off alone for the Heliotrope, the rest of the men following later. They had prepared the raft, and Ramage pulled his stock from his pocket. It was dry now. Jackson was waiting with the cutlass and knife. The wind dropping had left a warm night, and as the excitement of the second stage of the operation began to seep through him, the uniform felt particularly hot and oppressive. He felt an irrational hatred for it - irrational because she had made it clear it had not belonged to anyone she loved. He stopped for a moment. Loved now, but could it have been someone she had loved?

The devil take it; he would never see her again. Jackson stepped forward and helped him out of the jacket, and then he sat on the breech of a gun to pull off the rest of his clothes.

Over in the Amethyst, Aitken would be preparing. The second stage... and if it was successful the third stage would be the last one. It was, he reflected, an odd way to survey an island.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He came out of the blackness as though swimming up from a great depth and heard Jackson and Rossi talking in a jumble of words before sinking back again. The next time he surfaced, quietly and smoothly like a dolphin, he knew that he was cold and wet, and he could hear Sarah's voice. The third time, when he managed to stay with them longer, he realized that he was lying on the deck of a ship, soaking wet and with a dull, pounding pain in his left arm, close to where the scar was still white from the musket ball which hit him at Curaçao.

'Nicholas,' she was saying, her voice urgent. 'Can you hear me? Nicholas . . . Nicholas!'

He thought he was answering but everything seemed so far away. He shouted and his voice came out as a whisper, and he wished the pain in his arm would stop. 'Yes . . . yes.' That seemed about all he wanted to say. Quite why he was lying flat on his back, this awful pain in his arm, feeling that he was going to vomit any moment, and with something soft against his face, soft and warm, and moving slightly all the time, he did not know. Now someone was approaching with a lantern . . .

The light showed that he was lying by the mainmast of the Earl of Dodsworth and his head was cradled in a woman's arms. But he had swum away from the East Indiaman hours ago and boarded the Heliotrope alone.

What was happening in the Heliotrope? All those passengers, two of them children. He had explained what they were to do in French, and then the Calypso's boarding party had arrived. Yes, now he remembered that a privateersman had woken and roused the rest and there had been a desperate fight in that small cabin . . .

'Jackson! Jackson!' he shouted, and she heard him whispering, his teeth chattering with the violence of the shivering.

'He wants you,' she said to the American, the wetness of his hair soaking through her frock and chilling her breasts. While the American and the Italian continued tying the bandage round his arm, his face was as white as a sheet in the lanternlight: the cheekbones stuck out like elbows, the skin of his face stretched taut as though all the blood and much of the flesh had drained away in the sea while the men towed the raft with him lashed to it.

He was dying, of that she was sure, and her last words to him had been unpleasant; she had turned her back on him and walked away when all she wanted to do was kiss him and have him hold her. Now they had brought him back to die in her arms.

'Sir, it's Jackson,' the American crouched over him, his ears close to Nicholas's mouth. Sarah listened intently. Some last message for the Marchesa? No, he would give that to the young count. But she must not have these bitter thoughts now; if he died, two women would have loved him.

'Wha' happened?'

Jackson knew what his captain wanted to know. 'We saved the hostages, sir. The guards in the cabin were roused. One caught you with a cutlass as you spitted a man going for Spurgeon with a knife.'

'Di' we lose anyone?'

'Spurgeon, sir. The privateersman stabbed him the same moment the other one slashed you with his cutlass.'

'Wha'm I doing here?'

'Now, sir,' Jackson said soothingly, 'you rest now. The Lynx heard nothing. Mr Martin's in command in the Heliotrope and Mr Aitken's taken the Friesland.'

The American straightened himself and shouted aft: 'Look alive with those blankets! Sorry, ma'am,' he said to Sarah, 'but the captain's mortal cold.'

It was no good her explaining to this seaman that the passengers were so bewildered as to be almost helpless; that being seized by privateersmen in the first place had been a great shock; being suddenly rescued in the middle of the night was a second one; and now, having the man they regarded as their saviour dragged bleeding and unconscious up the side of the ship must seem like the end of the world to them.

God, he was shivering so violently. Now he was whispering again, every word taking so much effort. She reached out and tugged Jackson's shirt as he bent down to help Rossi with the bandage, which was a strip torn from a sheet.

'Calypso ... I must get to the Calypso . . .'

'Yes, sir, as soon as we can. Three of the men have swum over to fetch Mr Bowen and a boat.'

'Jackson, why bring me here?'

She realized that the American knew it was pointless to give soothing answers. 'You'd have bled to death a long time a'fore we reached her, sir. We started off for her but we couldn't swim fast enough towing the raft, and when you kept on bleeding in spite of the bandages and tourniquet, we reckoned we needed somewhere quick with dry bandages and a lantern.'

'Nicholas,' she said, 'they're trying to make you a hot drink, but they're frightened the glow of the galley stove might be seen from the Lynx. Will you sip this brandy?'

'Come on, sir,' Jackson said and uncapped a flat silver flask. Finally he said: 'It's no good, ma'am. I know what he's like from other times. He hates spirits.'

'Other times?' she whispered.

'We really thought we'd lost him the last time, didn't we, Rossi?'

'Mamma mia, when we blew up that Dutch frigate, I thought we were all loosed.'

'Lost,' Jackson corrected from habit, and said to Sarah.

'He'll be all right soon, ma'am; you wait until Mr Bowen arrives.'

'Who is he?'

'Our surgeon. Ah, about time!' he growled as two men arrived with blankets. 'We only needed two or three! Here, take that end and we'll slide one under him and use it to lift him.'

'Where are you going to take him?' she asked anxiously.

'Nowhere, ma'am. If you'll fold those other blankets into a mattress. Keep out a couple to go over him. Then we can lift him on to it.'