Ramage looked at his watch. Macchia that went snap in the night. A sentry on the battlements. A sentry at the door whose defence was thirty yards of crackling gravel. He thought of General Cargill's standard tactic, a direct frontal attack. "Thank you," he told the two Italians. "Pass the word for Mr Aitken as you go out."

The Calypso's first lieutenant had obviously been waiting on deck, and once he was sitting in the armchair Ramage gave him the gist of the two Italians' report.

"Doesn't seem too hopeful, sir," Aitken said. "Do we try the Giglio trick tomorrow, march up and bluff 'em?"

Ramage shook his head. "I'd like to, but it's too great a risk. We'd have to go through Port' Ercole and anyway someone might have come over from Giglio in the meantime and casually mentioned something. I might have risked it," he admitted, "if all the hostages were men, but I can't (at least, I won't) risk women's lives. Not with these stakes."

"But nothing is at stake, sir!" Aitken protested.

"Exactly. If we sail off and leave them, they're kept prisoners until the end of the war and they're left alive and safe. My orders are to rescue hostages named in my orders from the Admiralty, and I've done that: they're all safely on board."

Aitken looked stubborn. He stood up and began pacing the cabin, his head bent to one side to avoid hitting the beams. The dim light of the lantern showed the muscles taut along his jawline. Ramage could never remember his first lieutenant pacing the cabin before. Obviously strong emotions were at work in the Scotsman.

Finally Ramage exclaimed, "For God's sake, sit down and spit it out! All the pacing back and forth makes me dizzy!"

Aitken sat down, took a deep breath and turned to look directly at Ramage. "These women, sir. 1 don't fully agree with you, if you'll permit me to say so."

"Since when have you had to ask permission to give an honest opinion?"

"It's not just that," Aitken said mournfully. "I'm not just expressing an opinion; I'm completely disagreeing with you, sir."

"Tell me about it, then. With what do you disagree?" Ramage was exasperated: he seemed to be spending the evening hauling information out of men like corks from bottles.

"You said the women are 'safe' while they are still prisoners. I canna agree. They're hostages. This fellow Bonaparte is holding them as bargaining counters. When the Admiralty gave you orders to rescue the other hostages (the ones named, and whom we found at Giglio), you can't be sure that when the Admiralty drew up those orders they knew anything about the second group - the ones now in the fort. In fact, I'm sure they didn't."

"What do you suggest, then?" Ramage asked coldly. "Shall we hurry back to London and ask Their Lordships if we should include these others? Or would you prefer that I go ahead and risk their lives?"

"There's no need to go to London, sir. You've several of the husbands on board, including Sir Henry. Why not ask them what they think?"

"Call a council of war, eh?" Ramage asked sarcastically.

"No, sir," Aitken answered calmly, knowing how his captain despised councils of war. "But husbands understand their wives," he continued. "Sir Henry knows what his wife would want us to do. Maybe just as important, Sir Henry knows what he would prefer. You can ask them individually: visit each one in his cabin. There's no question of a council of war and no question of evading responsibility. I'm a bachelor, I admit; but if I was a married man in this position, safe on board a frigate with my wife up in yon fortress, I know I'd like to have a say in what's to be done. After you know what the husbands have said, you can make your decision. The responsibility will be yours, and yours alone."

The more Ramage thought about it, the more reasonable Aitken's argument became. "Very well, I'll do that, and thanks for speaking up: I'm grateful - though I'm rather puzzled why you hesitated."

Both men sat alone with their thoughts for two or three minutes, until Ramage said quietly: "But even if all the husbands are in favour of us trying a rescue, how the devil can we tackle Forte della Stella? It's designed to hold off an army . . ."

"We're just reaching the place where we need the rope ladder," Orsini said. "You can see that sharp rock up there, sir: just made to secure it."

"Wait a moment," Ramage gasped, "let me get my breath back: I'm neither a topman nor a goat, and this climbing in the dark is hard work."

Below and slightly to the north of them, the rocky islet of Isolotto sat in the sea as though rolled down from the top of Monte Argentario and bounced out far enough from the coast to leave a wide channel. It was steep-sided with deep water round it, and the Calypso, anchored to leeward seemed - well, Ramage could only think she must look as though she belonged there.

Port' Ercole, over on her starboard quarter, was too small to provide a good anchorage for a frigate unless towed in with boats and it was too shallow alongside the jetty. So what was more obvious than a French national ship anchoring in the lee of Isolotto, only a brisk row or a short sail for one of her boats should the captain need to visit the port?

"Blast these mosquitoes," Ramage muttered, "they seem to be hiding in every bush I grab for a handhold."

"At least we frightened the goats off," Paolo said, recalling how he had sat in the captain's cabin while he and Rossi reported, and although his wrists, ankles, neck and face seemed one itching mass, he had managed not to scratch himself.

Orsini led the way upwards just as Stafford arrived on the small ledge with a party of cursing seamen, two of whom manhandled the rolled-up rope ladder while others with the coil of knotted rope were hitching it round rocks and bushes to provide handholds.

The moon was rising quickly now with the thinning cloud breaking up into patches to reveal many of the stars and planets. More important, Ramage realized, the moon was throwing enough shadow to show the seamen and Marines now coming up the cliff face where to put their feet. On a night like this, with a land breeze blowing from the edge of the cliffs across to the fort, a musket dropped a few feet on to a rock might well make a clatter loud enough to reach the ears of the French sentry on the battlements.

Those wooden buckets: he wished now he had risked using the leather ones because a wooden bucket if accidentally dropped (or grasped tightly by a man as he slipped and fell) would make almost as much noise as a dropped musket.

And the devil take climbing a cliff face with a brace of pistols jammed into the top of your breeches and a sword wrapped in canvas slung down your back, even if some marline prevented it swinging against the rocks. Nor did burnt cork smeared on the face and hands to blacken them add to the general feeling of comfort.

Ramage stopped feeling sorry for himself as he concentrated on the vertical climb that Orsini had earlier dismissed as "fairly easy" and then pictured Southwick at the end of the tail of seamen and Marines, jollying along the men and making sure they moved silently.

As he reached the top of the vertical cliff face and found Jackson only just behind him, Ramage sat down on a rock and watched the American unwind a light line coiled round his chest and shoulders, and drop one end over the edge. There was a call from below and then, two minutes later, another, and Jackson started hauling on the line. It was obviously heavier than he had expected and both Ramage and Orsini helped him. Finally the top step of the rope ladder appeared; then the second and third.

"Charge them a shilling a time," Ramage said as he left Jackson securing the heavier ropes of the ladder round the rock Orsini had pointed out. Ramage wiped the perspiration from his brow before it ran into his eyes. It was a damnably hot night, apart from all this climbing, and there was little enough breeze.