Ramage looked round at Orsini with eyebrows raised.

"Just polite talk, sir; I wanted to make sure she would not gossip. That reminds me, they thought we - the Calypso, that is - were the ship that took the hostages away, and that we had returned to anchor out here."

"Both of you are sure there was no hint of where the hostages were being taken?"

Rossi and Orsini shook their heads, Rossi wincing as the quick movement jarred his arm.

"Very well, my thanks to the pair of you. I gather that Mr Hill was about to shoot you both when you rowed round to Cala Pozzarello in that fisherman's boat. That wasn't the time to forget the nightjar call and start shouting, Mr Orsini."

Orsini looked embarrassed. "I've always dreaded something like that, sir, and finally it happened . . ."

"You were lucky Mr Hill recognized your voice."

Ramage stood up. "Pass the word for Mr Aitken and Mr Southwick as you go out, please," he told Hill, "and hoist in the boats."

When Southwick and Aitken arrived, he pulled the Tyrrhenian Sea chart from the rack above, opened it and held it down with paperweights.

"Very well, Mr Southwick, so Bonaparte's villains have decamped with our birds. Where do you think we should start looking?"

"The islands, sir: that's about all I have to offer. I can't see the French using a ship to move them up or down the mainland coast: they marched them to Pitigliano from somewhere up north."

"From Florence, sir?" Aitken asked. "Isn't that the most likely place to find a crowd of wealthy English enjoying themselves when the war started again?"

Ramage nodded. "I'd expect to find them in Rome or Florence. A few in Naples, perhaps. But most of them visiting the artistic treasures of Florence."

He thought for a minute or two, his imagination spreading a map of northern Italy in front of him. Yes, Florence was most likely. All the English visitors (and Scots, Welsh and Irish) might have been rounded up there, like so many cattle, and then the French would have sorted out the important ones and selected their hostages . . . Hmmm . . . hostages meant people both special and different, and the French would separate them from the others. And intended to keep them separate? Yes, but where? Well, the obvious needs were reasonable accommodation and good security. The Palazzo degli Orsini at Pitigliano had been perfect in every respect.

He opened a pair of dividers and measured the distance between Florence and Pitigliano. About one hundred miles, more by the twisting roads. So ... that told him the French did not hesitate to march the hostages one hundred miles. That in turn probably meant they would not hesitate to march them two or three hundred miles: there was no hurry, and there was precious little else to occupy the Army of Italy at the moment.

The conclusion to be drawn from all that? Well, the fact that the hostages had been put on board a ship (on board a frigate that by chance looked like the Calypso: a sister ship, probably, because it was a very successful design) must mean that they were being moved to somewhere not accessible by land.

An island, in other words. Sardinia, Corsica? No, he had ruled them out earlier because of bandits and guerrillas. The French were not popular in either island and the hostages might be killed or freed: there was no certainty either way.

Which left the tiny islands just off the north coast of Sicily (which did not seem likely) or those in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Which was what Southwick had just said, although, Ramage noted ruefully, that was Southwick's instinct; Ramage had reached the same conclusion by a more devious route.

"It won't take long to check them all, sir," Aitken said.

"Providing we don't meet a French squadron - or even the French frigate that took them away from here."

"Heh," snorted Southwick, "it's been a long time since we had a decent action: the ship's company are getting soft."

"Don't tell Rossi that," Ramage said as he measured off a distance on the chart with the dividers. "We'll weigh at dusk - then no one keeping a watch from Argentario or Talamone will be sure where we are bound. Not," he added, remembering Orsini's words earlier, "that anyone thinks we are anything but a French national ship."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Daylight showed they had anchored in the darkness at just the right position with the island of Giglio half a mile away on the starboard hand as the Calypso's bow swung slightly to a southerly breeze.

Ramage stood with Aitken and Southwick while they examined the island with telescopes. "You see, it's just a mountain put down haphazardly in the sea, like so many islands round here. Just look at that village on the top - you could mistake it for a castle. Castellated walls with a hundred or so houses inside, judging by the roofs we can see. I'll bet none of the people up there are fishermen! Imagine the long walk downhill to the port, and then the climb back up the hill again with the day's catch. Castello, that's the name of it. Strong enough as a refuge if the Saracens are sighted."

Aitken nodded. "Yes, everyone would bolt up there from the port and from that village on the other side of the island - Campese, isn't it? - and slam the gates shut. Load the rusty muskets, boil up some olive oil - water, too, I expect - and be ready to pour it down on the heads of the Saracens as they try to batter the gate down and climb the walls. If I was inside the Castello with those heathens shouting and screaming for my blood and my wife's body, I think I'd sooner rely on boiling oil than damp gunpowder in rusty muskets."

"The Saracens - the people here always call them i Saraceni, incidentally, not Barbary pirates - have been raiding this coast for hundreds of years: to these people a Saracen raid is about like a severe storm to the Isle of Wight," Ramage said. "When the Aragonese owned this part of the coast they did these people a service by building the lookout towers, forts and places like Castello, though I doubt they received much thanks at the time because the local people had to quarry the stone and do the work

"Just look at that terracing on those slopes: they must press a good deal of wine. Come to think of it, they produce a very good white, and it travels. The trouble with that Argentario wine is that it hardly reaches Orbetello before the shaking of the cart (or donkey if they use small barrels) has turned it to vinegar."

Ramage resumed examining the island. "That's a tiny harbour, just big enough for fishing boats. No one seems interested in us. But - that's odd. Very odd . . ."

Aitken and Southwick waited for an explanation and when none came the master gave a sniff that Ramage recognized as "You don't have to tell us but. . ."

"Castello," Ramage said. "They have a flagpole. Seems to be the only thing up there that's been erected in the last hundred years - and it's been painted. Once the sun is up it'll stand out like a pencil."

"And if they hoist a Tricolour . . ." Southwick said.

"If they hoist a Tricolour it'll save you walking up the hill to see if the French are there," Ramage said.

Aitken looked again with his telescope and then said: "But that doesn't actually prove the hostages are there, does it sir?"

"No, only that there's a French garrison, which one would expect. A small garrison, anyway: probably less than fifty men."

"Well," Southwick observed, "no one over there in the port seems very excited that we've arrived. If the commander of the garrison thought we had anything for him, I'm sure he'd have sent out a boat by now."

"Perhaps they don't get up early," Aitken said. "If I spent much time here I'd probably slip into these Frenchified habits - eating and drinking too much and sleeping late."