But apart from that, Mazara was a town of weeping women and men walking round as though they had been stunned. There was not much damage to the town and that, Ramage thought to himself, was about all that could be said in favour of the Saraceni. Ramage had a long talk with the mayor: he had managed to escape being taken prisoner by hiding in the belfry of one of the churches. The Saraceni had raided the town in broad daylight, taking about a hundred men and fifty women, and had left to the eastward. When Ramage compared the dates, he found that Mazara had been raided twelve days after Marsala. Why the long delay, since the voyage between the two took only a few hours?

The answer, when he finally thought of it, was very obvious: the Saracens had only small boats - fishermen, tartanes and the like -which could not hold many people, so after each raid they had to return to their base to unload the prisoners, and then come back to the Sicilian coast for more.

Ramage almost breathed a sigh of relief: he was - probably - not as far behind the Saraceni as he thought: there were only five more ports along the south coast that the pirates were likely to raid. Would they then work their way round the east coast? Or would they start along the northern coast?

The Calypso spent the night anchored off the port and next day weighed to sail eastward to the next little port, Sciacca, an old town perched on the side of a steep hill overlooking the harbour.

As the Calypso anchored off Sciacca - the harbour was too shallow to allow the frigate in - Ramage saw that the port was surrounded by a wall, with the ruins of a castle at the eastern end. At the other end was a church with a green cupola. He had no trouble finding Punta Pertuso, marked on the chart - it had bright yellow cliffs and had a hole through it.

There were only a few boats lying alongside down in the harbour and Ramage, accompanied by Rennick and a couple of Marines, had to walk up to the town, which was obviously originally Aragonese. The square in the middle of the town was pleasantly cool, and when Ramage asked the way to the mayor's house he was directed to a small house two streets behind the square.

The mayor was home, a stocky little man with a large flowing black moustache which contrasted with his grey hair. The man was obviously intrigued at this visit from a British naval officer and his escort and Ramage, already hot from the walk up the hill, was thankful to be invited into the house, out of the sun.

Ramage explained the reason for the Calypso's arrival off the port and the mayor admitted that at first when he had seen the ship he had been alarmed.

"We are defenceless," he said. "A few fowling pieces and scythes. Not enough, you understand, to drive off six Saraceni, let alone a hundred."

"So they've been here. How many prisoners did they take?"

"About a hundred men and twenty women. And they took most of our fishing boats: all those of a good size. You saw the ones they left down in the port."

"When were you last raided?" Ramage asked.

"When I was a boy. Thirty years ago, perhaps more. Marsala, yes, they raided there only about five years ago, but not here: they left us in peace until now. So we have lost our best young men. What can we do?"

"We can't do anything about the men already taken," Ramage said. "They are probably already in Algiers or Tunis or some such place. But I am here at the King's order -" Ramage thought the exaggeration was in order, " - to try to destroy these pirates, to stop them raiding more towns."

The mayor shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. "Marsala, Mazara, here - why, if Selinunte had been inhabited they would have raided there."

Selinunte was the ruin of a large Greek city ten miles or so west of Sciacca: Ramage had seen the huge stone columns as the Calypso had sailed past, and his book told him that there were great blocks of stone and many sculptures left there after the Carthaginians sacked the city five hundred years before Christ.

"At least the Saraceni did not burn your town," Ramage said gently. "At least your survivors still have somewhere to live."

"Some life," the mayor said bitterly. "I have lost a son and three nephews, and a niece. And the people call me lucky: many of them lost more."

The man was about to cry, and Ramage knew of no way of comforting him: there was no way of disguising the fate of the men and women he had lost, and at the moment there was no guarantee that another such raid would not happen.

Ramage said his farewell, and with Rennick and the Marines he walked back down the hill again.

As they walked, Ramage told Rennick what the mayor had said. Finally Rennick said: "I wonder if I would have been so controlled if I had lost so much."

"I don't know if he is controlled or stunned. I think it is too soon after it happened. It'll be another week or two before he realizes exactly what he's lost. Or what has happened to them. Yes, he knows they've been captured; but he hasn't yet thought about the galleys and the brothels. That is what will break him up."

Back on board the Calypso, he called Aitken and South wick to his cabin and repeated to them the mayor's story. Their reaction was the same as Rennick's.

"There's no chance of rescuing any of them, that's the terrible thing about it," Southwick said.

"It's obvious that the Algerines have hundreds of slaves," Ramage said. "And no one dares guess how many women go into the brothels."

"It's a pity we can't do something about it."

"That's what the British government has been saying for a hundred years," Ramage said. "But first you have to capture Algiers. Then half a dozen other places. And by the time you have captured them, most of the slaves will have been put to death. There's no man alive more ruthless than a Saracen."

"Where now?" Southwick asked.

"We'll just carry on eastward along the coast. Porto Empedocle is the next place, and I have a feeling we shall arrive there too late."

The mayor of Porto Empedocle told a similar story to that of the mayor of Sciacca: the Saraceni had arrived three days earlier, turned out all the men and women and lined them up in the street, and then taken their pick. The mayor had lost four nephews but as the good lord had not seen fit to give his wife any children, he had not lost any sons. The Saraceni had gone off with their prisoners, seventy men and thirty women, many of whom were crowded into fishing boats stolen from the harbour.

"We shall never recover," the mayor said. "We have lost our best young men and our boats. What is there left?"

And Ramage knew he was right: there was nothing left. On the ridge above Empedocle stood the temples of Agrigento: a vast Greek city whose now ruined walls enclosed a couple of square miles. At the height of its power, it was estimated, the population had been a million people. Even before then the Cretans had tried to capture the city for five years. And what did it all mean now for the mayor of Empedocle, grieving at the Saraceni raid? Nothing, Ramage decided; it simply emphasized how, in the sweep of history, none of it mattered.

As Ramage returned to the Calypso in the cutter he considered the three days. If he was correct, the Empedocle prisoners were still on their way to Algiers or Tunis, or wherever the Saracens were based.

Back in his cabin, relating to Aitken and Southwick what the mayor of Empedocle had told him, Ramage repeated the information about the three days, and Aitken immediately said: "We should find that the next port, Licata, hasn't been attacked yet."

"Not only that," Ramage said, "but we have eight or nine days to get ready for the next attack."

Aitken shook his head: he was puzzled and dispirited. "From what all the mayors have been saying, the Saracens have picked up another twenty or so boats. If they started off with twenty - and I doubt if they had fewer than that - they now have forty. How can we deal with forty boats even though they won't be carrying guns-at least half of them won't, anyway. It'll be like trying to snatch sprats out of a barrel: those tartanes and galleys will be just as slippery."