"Ah - there goes the pump again!''' Aitken called as he caught sight of a small stream of water starting to run over the side again. "Not the full flow. Must be a blockage - or maybe it's been damaged by one of our shot.''

Ramage watched as Le Jason slowly rolled to larboard again, checked and then slowly began to roll back to starboard. Then he saw men gathering at the foot of the main shrouds.

"They're going to furl the maintopsail," he said to Aitken. "They want to try to reduce the rolling. Stand by to heave-to."

At that moment the Calypso fired another broadside, and the group of men scattered, many of them vanishing below the bulwarks as roundshot cut them down.

But the French frigate continued her rolling: the movement was getting massive and wild now; her masts were slicing great arcs through the sky and, Ramage realized, it would be only a matter of time before the gunports dipped into the water.

Prisoners - or survivors, call them what you will: more than two hundred of them. No, he was not going to risk having them on board all the way to Naples: in fact with the island of Capraia just astern that was as far as he would take them. They would be prisoners on the island - unless they set to and made rafts - and they would be no danger to anyone, though they would run the local people short of food.

The French captain seemed to have given up trying to lighten the ship - he could still cut yards adrift, and he had not thrown all the booms and gratings over the side yet - but Ramage knew he must have given up: a hole in the hull which let in a leak which overcame the pump was the ultimate; apart from fire, it was the end.

With the freshening wind driving the frigate ahead, the rolling caused by the leak was giving her a curious corkscrew motion through the water, as though she was reluctant to move. Ramage watched as she rolled heavily towards him, paused for several agonizing seconds well heeled over, and then slowly rolled back again, to pause before returning.

"She hasn't got much more time," Southwick commented.

"Neither have we," Ramage said. "I've changed my mind: we'll put the survivors up on the fo'c'sle. I want a couple of the aftermost guns on each side trained round on to the fo'c'sle and loaded with case. And pass the word for Rennick."

The master trotted off down the ladder, his long white hair flowing in the breeze, to arrange to have the guns slewed round and their tackles made up again. A couple of minutes later Rennick was standing in front of him, waiting for orders.

"The survivors, when we pick them up," Ramage said.

Rennick made a face. "There'll be plenty of them, sir."

"I know," Ramage said. "They might even outnumber us. But I'm going to put them on the fo'c'sle with four guns trained on them, and I want all your Marines covering them but keeping out of the way of the guns. They'll escort them from wherever they're brought on board up to the fo'c'sle. Any nonsense, they're to shoot to kill."

"After they've swum around a bit, the French might have any wrong ideas washed out of them, sir," Rennick said with a grin.

"I'm hoping so. But the point of keeping them up on the fo'c'sle is that I'm going to take them back to Capraia and dump them there. They'll only be on the fo'c'sle a couple of hours, and if they give any trouble a few whiffs of caseshot should quieten them down."

"Very well, sir," Rennick said and saluted before hurrying down the quarterdeck ladder.

Le Jason was lurching rather than rolling now: as Ramage watched the stricken ship he could imagine the hundreds of tons of water sloshing from one side and then to the other, each time the weight heeling the ship and throwing men off their feet.

"Her rate of fire is slowing down, sir," Aitken said. "The water has probably flooded her magazine, apart from the difficulty of laying the guns."

"She hasn't much time left."

"I wonder why the Frenchman hasn't hauled down his colours."

"It doesn't make much difference whether he surrenders or not," Ramage said sourly. "He's going to sink whether or not he's hauled down his colours. Anyway, he's fought well. It was his navigation that put him on that rock: but for that I think we'd have had an even tougher fight."

The more he thought about it, the more Ramage was convinced that his gunners were only wasting powder: they could not damage the enemy more effectively than she was already, and it was time for the guns' crews to get muskets and pikes, pistols and tomahawks ready for the influx of French survivors.

He gave the order to Aitken which would silence the guns for the first time since they had opened fire on the first frigate, and which would send the men to get the weapons allocated to them in the quarters bill. Most of the men had a note against their name indicating what weapons they were to have, and whether they were boarders if the Calypso should board another ship.

A sudden hush fell over the Calypso as the guns stopped firing and all that Ramage could hear was the rush of the sea against the hull and the occasional slatting of a sail. He realized that he was deafened by the broadsides and he held his nose and blew hard, but it made no difference.

Southwick hurried back to the quarterdeck. "Those guns are trained round, sir," he said. "We can't get the tackles hooked on to anything substantial, so there's no telling how they'll recoil. Still, only have to fire them once, I expect," he said complacently.

"Probably not even once," Ramage said. "We'll point them out to the French officers: that should do the trick."

Even as he spoke he watched the French frigate heel right over until her deck on the larboard side was in the water. She seemed to stay there for an age, and then, as though tired of the struggle, she very slowly capsized: the masts came down below horizontal, the yards slewing round, and the trucks of the masts dipped into the sea and then began to sink as the ship continued turning.

She turned very slowly, great bubbles of air bursting out through the hatchways and ports. Ramage saw the Tricolour dip into the water and then there were splashes as guns broke loose and dropped through the ship's side.

"Furl the maintopsail," Ramage snapped at Aitken, and to Southwick he said: "Get the boats hauled round ready."

From a distance of fifty yards Ramage found the sight of the frigate sinking both sad and, in another sense, a relief. It was sad because the sinking of any handsome ship - and Le Jason was a handsome ship - was always distressing, and yet a relief because her guns could not kill or wound any more men of the Calypso. While the boats were being hauled round alongside, Southwick was shouting orders for the boats' crews to stand by, and while the men left the guns and ran to their stations, Ramage watched Le Jason. She had turned over completely and was lying in the water like a great turtle. Her copper sheathing was green except near the waterline, where it was pitted, restored to its normal colour by shots which had torn into it 'twixt wind and water.

Great gouts of air escaped as the capsized hull rolled; then it gave a gigantic convulsion as though shaking itself free of something, and Ramage guessed that the masts had come adrift. A minute or two later he saw first one and then another mast break water close beside the hull, a tangle of spars and rigging, and now freed of their weight the hull began to slide below the surface, water erupting in' little volcanoes, propelled by random air pockets.

The surface of the sea was scattered with floating wreckage. Here and there he could see men, random black figures, clinging to spars.

Now all that was left was a great circle of smooth water, punctuated every now and again by a bubble of air coming up from the sinking ship. More pieces of wreckage, spars and other pieces of wood breaking loose came up to the surface, shooting out of the water like lances with the force of their buoyancy.