Ramage nodded and laughed. "We'll see. You might find my fellows at the barracks before you have had time to open fire."

He thought for a few moments and then looked round at the men, who were waiting expectantly. "Very well," he said, "we will wait just over the horizon for a wind with some south or north in it. Then we will sail in. And this is how we'll attack." He then outlined his ideas, modified by Jason King's suggestion about the sloops.

When he had finished he said: "Tomorrow morning we have one last exercise, embarking the troops, Marines and sailors, and landing them on the beach. I'm not concerned with the beach pan of it, but we might change our plans at the last moment and need to use the boats."

i1

It was easy to spot where Sidi Rezegh was yet still stay beyond the horizon and out of sight of the Saracens: Sidi Rezegh was midway between four humpbacked hills, two to the north and two to the south, and quite unmistakable.

The wind was light, from the west, and when he had worked out the noon sight Southwick commented to Ramage: "There's half a knot of current, and it's probably due to the wind."

Judging the strength of the current along the coast of Sicily and in the channel over to the Tunisian coast was always difficult: the usual eastgoing current sometimes turned into a counter-current as it swept into the great gulf along the east coast of Tunisia, and became a hostage to the wind: a prolonged westerly wind could set up a two-knot eastgoing current; an easterly wind could set up a current going west at a couple of knots or more. And a light wind or a period of calms could mean no current at all. It was an area not favoured by navigators: a few days' scirocco hiding the sun with dust haze or cloud could prevent sights and bring a lot of guesswork into navigation.

"We're about eleven miles due north of Sidi Rezegh. As close as we need to go until we get the wind we want," Southwick added.

Ramage agreed. "We don't want to be spotted by any Saracen vessel going into Sidi Rezegh, but even if we're sighted by one of them this far out they'd never guess our destination."

He turned to Kenton, who was the officer of the deck. "Make a signal to the flotilla to heave-to, and stand by to heave-to this ship when I give the word."

After Kenton passed the instructions to Orsini, who was in charge of signals, he picked up the speaking trumpet and started giving orders preparing to heave-to.

The seamen running to the rigging had to pick their way over the bodies of soldiers who, finding it too hot below, were allowed to lie down on the deck. Many of them had stripped down to trousers; already some were red from sunburn, although Ramage had given instructions through Major Golightly that no man should be bare for more than an hour.

Now it was a question of waiting: being patient and waiting for the wind to swing north or south. It rarely stayed west for any length of time, according to Southwick, although these were waters that Ramage did not know. It was annoying to have to wait; yet again Ramage cursed that he had not been born with more patience.

Within ten minutes the Calypso was hove-to with the Amalie, Rose and Betty lying to leeward, pitching slightly in the barely perceptible swell. There was just enough movement and little enough wind for Ramage to detect the smell of the bilges. There was always a few inches of water that the pumps could not suck out, and which stank. Normally, with a good breeze blowing through the ship, the smell was not too offensive. But now, with just enough movement to stir up the bilges but not enough breeze to clear the ship of the smell, Ramage found it unpleasant, and cursed the shipbuilders who could not build a pump that cleared those last few inches. It was very unfair on the worthy French shipbuilders who had constructed the Calypso in the first place, because no ship that Ramage knew of had such a pump. The smell of bilges was something that one lived with.

As Ramage stood at the quarterdeck rail, he tried to think of what was expected of him as the senior officer of a little flotilla, but he could think of nothing except that perhaps, while they were held up, hove-to and waiting for a fair wind, he ought to invite the captains over for dinner. He thought about it and then decided he had not the patience to go through the ritual of being polite to strangers. He would have to invite Major Golightly, but he quite enjoyed the soldier's company. The man had travelled, and he had kept his eyes open. He had spent five years in India, and had a fund of stories about life out there. He had also served in the East Indies and the West, and it seemed that he had only just missed meeting Ramage in the West Indies on a dozen occasions.

One thing for which Ramage liked him was that he shared Ramage's loathing for Antigua. He had many unhappy memories of guard duty on Shirley Heights, the high cliffs overlooking English Harbour, and at Fort St James, guarding the capital, St John. He had been intrigued to find that the Calypso had been captured from the French off Martinique, to the south, and then taken to English Harbour to be fitted out as a British ship of war. When Ramage had told him of the inefficiency and corruption he had found among the dockyard workers at English Harbour Golightly had been sympathetic: it seemed the Army was in no better state, there being constant complaints about the quality and quantity of rations, with the men once threatening to mutiny.

Ramage supposed there was the same corruption in the dockyards and barracks in England and then found himself doubting it. He had never come across it so obviously in England. There was probably corruption in the dockyards but it was confined to the workmen (and probably the port admirals): it did not affect the ships and their captains as it did in the West Indies. It was as though the tropical sun made morals fester; that once removed from England men decided they were going to get rich, no matter who suffered or was cheated. A British ship of war cheated by some dockyard official was suffering as though harmed by the enemy. English Harbour was the worst offender in the West Indies, but how did it compare with Gibraltar, or Malta?

The real fault, he realized, lay with the Admiralty and the Navy Board and, for that matter, with the government. He had been browsing through the Royal Kalendar recently when he came across a particularly glaring case of nepotism. Coming under the Pay Office was the Pay Branch for Paying Seamen's Wages. The Deputy Paymaster in London was John Swaffield, paid £660 a year. The Deputy Paymaster at Portsmouth was John Swaffield junior, paid £440 a year, while the Deputy Paymaster at Plymouth was Joseph Swaffield, also paid £440. What was more significant was that they each had a deputy, paid £330 a year. In other words, they left their deputy to do the work. But the Swaffields did not confine their activities (or lack of) to the Pay Branch: in the next column, under Victualling Branch, was another one of them: the Cashier of the Victualling for Paying Bills, was G. Swaffield, paid £660 a year.

Nor was this sort of thing confined to the Admiralty: he remembered the pages headed "British Governments in America and the West Indies", where Jamaica seemed a favourite spot for absentees. The Receiver in Chancery was the Hon. P. C. Wyndham; the Secretary was the Hon. Charles Wyndham and, most surprisingly of all, the Clerk of the Court was Evan Nepean - who was earning £4,000 a year as Secretary to the Board of Admiralty in London.

It was very doubtful if the Wyndhams or Nepean had ever been to Jamaica; it was even doubtful if they could find it on a map without a careful search. But they - and dozens more like them -were paid for the job they never did. If there was any work to be done they hired a substitute: there was a good profit in paying a man £50 a year for doing a job for which you were paid £660. And, of course, in the islands it was possible to keep things in the family -as in Bermuda, for instance. The President of the Council was the Hon. H. Tucker; the Secretary and Treasurer was H. Tucker junior (presumably the President's son); while the Speaker was the Hon. James Tucker, and the Surveyor was John H. Tucker. There were dozens of other examples, though the names concerned he could not remember. In the West Indies, he knew very well, it was not unusual for someone comfortably resident in England to have two or three jobs in islands a thousand miles apart - jobs which he obviously could never carry out.