With the Calypsos collected round him, Ramage shouted at the lieutenants: "Form into sections; attack from different directions."

They were not orders that would be approved by the Marines but they were the best he could do shouting at the top of his voice in the middle of a battle. The men collected round their officers, choosing the lieutenant commanding their divisions of guns on board the Calypso. The sudden movement by the seamen and Marines had puzzled the Saracens, who stood nonplussed. Then Ramage, satisfied that his men were in some sort of order, bellowed: "Charge!"

Now the motley collection of Saracens were attacked by four separate columns and, lacking any discipline, were quickly broken into large and small groups. Ramage joined Hill's men, who were the nearest, and parried a scimitar as it sliced down on to the back of a seaman. The rasping of metal against metal made the seaman turn in time to slash the Saracen with his cutlass.

Orsini was shouting something at Ramage which he could not hear and pointing seaward. Ramage glanced up to see the Calypso sailing in through the harbour entrance: she must have spotted the smoke, since the flag had not been hoisted at the castle flagpole. But what could an undermanned frigate do? She could not open fire with her guns because she would kill more Calypsos than Saracens.

But Ramage had not realized the effect the great frigate - she seemed enormous in the tiny port compared with the Saracens' boats - would have on the Arabs: at that moment several of them spotted her and started a wild, demented howl which was quickly taken up by the rest of them. The moment they turned to look at the frigate the Calypsos redoubled their efforts, slashing at the Arabs in a desperate attempt to take advantage of their momentary preoccupation.

Suddenly the Saracens broke away and started running across the quay and back to their boats. At the same time they seemed to notice for the first time the twisted yards and this provoked more howling, as they realized that they were trapped.

At that moment Ramage heard a gigantic splash as the Calypso let go an anchor and then, as her sails were furled, began to .wing round head to wind, to lie parallel with the quay and the Saracen craft, which were fifty yards away from her.

As the Calypsos ran after the Saracens, chasing them back to their boats, they hurled curses after them, slashing with their cutlasses at the unprotected backs of men who had at last panicked and were only concerned with getting aboard their boats.

Ramage paused a moment. Aitken had enough seamen to man a few of the 12-pounders; in fact Ramage was certain that as many guns as possible would at this very moment be in the act of being loaded and trained. And if and when the Calypso's broadsides crashed into the boats, he did not want any of his men near.

He shouted to the lieutenants to halt the men. Hill and Rennick heard him and stopped their sections, and then the rest of the Calypsos, realizing that some of their comrades had stopped, halted and looked back. In the meantime the Arabs continued their headlong dash to the boats and started scrambling on board, despite the damage caused by Jackson's carronade.

At that moment the carronade barked out again and Ramage saw its caseshot cut a swathe through the running Saracens. By now there were few of them left on the quay: most had piled into the boats and were beginning frantically to cast them off.

Suddenly the Calypso's side was a flicker of winking red eyes and a moment later plumes of smoke streamed out. Then the erratic crash of the broadside rattled across the quay as at least eight 12-pounders fired into the massed boats.

Ramage stood with his lieutenants and the seamen and Marines to watch as the Calypso fired a second broadside and then a third. Two tartanes began to, sink, one of the galleys suddenly heeled over and filled, taking the slaves with it, and two of the captured fishing boats capsized.

"What a slaughter!" Hill commented. "What timing!"

Ramage suddenly felt rather weak; his knees no longer wanted to support him, and he wanted to giggle. Well, that was how relief took you because, he admitted, but for the Calypso he wondered if they would have been able to deal with all the Saracens.

"We'll wait and let Aitken finish them off," Ramage said. At that moment the carronade coughed again, and Ramage added: "And Jackson, too!"

Another two tartanes suddenly heeled over as water poured in through their shattered hulls and they slowly filled, and Ramage saw men floundering in the water. The Saracens could fight well enough, but they could not swim. The Calypso's fourth broadside smashed into the remaining boats and Orsini commented: "There go two more of them!" as two fishing boats suddenly sank, their masts vanishing as they disappeared into what Ramage guessed was five fathoms of water.

Yet again Jackson's carronade fired, and Ramage could imagine the American's glee at having caught the Saracens in such a crossfire. And the Arabs' own haste to escape had doomed them: they had cast off the craft alongside the quay, and all the rest of the vessels were secured to them. Slowly they drifted away from the quay so there was no chance for any of the Saracens to get back on to the land; instead they were doomed to drift closer under the Calypso's guns.

Ramage noticed that the Calypso was not firing at the two galleys: obviously Aitken had thought about the galley slaves chained to the oars and decided to give them a chance. But Ramage wondered how they were going to get at the Saracens -fighting across the galleys' decks would be risky as far as the slaves were concerned.

Now the Saracens' vessels had stopped drifting: those left afloat were being held by the lines of those that had been secured to them and then sunk. Which meant that they were perfect for the Calypso's guns, which had stationary targets at less than fifty yards' range.

In ten minutes the only craft left afloat were the two galleys, and the Calypso stopped firing, and so did Jackson's carronade. Ramage saw the frigate hoist out boats and through his telescope saw Aitken climbing down into one of the cutters, which then made for the quay. Ramage stood to one side and waved, and the cutter altered course towards him.

Aitken was jubilant. "I hope you approve of the timing, sir!"

Ramage smiled and said: "You were early - thank goodness."

"I saw all the masts and as soon as I could see the flag was not flying I guessed they were attacking. Then we saw the smoke of the carronade. Just one, sir."

"That was Jackson and his men firing on the boats. I had to stop the rest because the Saracens attacked them."

"I hope they didn't spike any," Aitken said anxiously.

"No - they didn't get near them, in fact. I had to let the seamen and Marines drive them off, which meant stopping the carronades firing. All except Jackson's gun: he took no notice and kept on firing at the boats."

"The galleys," Aitken said. "I didn't fire into them because of the slaves."

"Quite right, but now we have to hook out the Saracens."

"We can board them from the boats, sir."

"Ramage shook his head. "No, these fellows are madmen; our casualties would be enormous. I'm not prepared to lose that many men just to save slaves."

Damnation, it was a rotten dilemma. How was he to save the slaves without losing dozens of his men? The only way would be to swamp the Saracens; somehow attack them with a couple of hundred men.

It was easy. The idea came to him so quickly that at first he was suspicious of it, and tried to work out what could go wrong. But there seemed to be nothing wrong with it and he described it to Aitken.

"We want the two galleys back alongside the quay, so that we can board them from the land and completely outnumber them."