Were the Frenchmen firing high, to dismantle the rigging? He had not heard many shots passing overhead and decided they must be still firing into the hull. Well, it might mean more casualties but he did not want masts to come tumbling down. There was one thing about it - the Junon could not fire a full broadside on the larboard side because of the sails still draped over the forward guns.

He told the first lieutenant: 'We'll haul our wind as soon as we're in position to cross his stern and rake him again. Warn the lieutenants that we'll be firing to larboard again.'

Ramage realized that the Dido was sailing in a huge figure of eight round the Junon and because of the direction she was going the larboard guns were doing most of the work. Not that it mattered to the gunners: there were only enough men on board to work the guns on one side at a time; no ship in the King's service ever had a large enough complement to fight both sides at the same time, so the gunners had to dash from one side to the other as required.

As the Dido, now out on the Junon's larboard quarter, bore up and turned to larboard to begin her run across the French ship's stern, Southwick said diffidently: 'The smoke coming from thoseforward ports - it seems to be coming from under the sails. Surely they didn't fire those guns?'

Ramage shook his head. 'No, I'm sure they didn't.' He put the telescope to his eye. 'Doesn't look like gunsmoke, either: it's the wrong colour.'

'What on earth's going on, sir?'

It was a puzzle: the gunsmoke had blown clear of the Junon's afterports, but there were still trickles of smoke which seeped, rather than spurted, from underneath the sails.

'Perhaps some fool fired a gun and the flash set the sails on fire. That could easily happen.'

'Yes, sir, but,' Southwick persisted, 'I can't see any sign of a sail actually burning: the flames'd move pretty quickly.'

Ramage hurriedly examined the sails with the glass. Southwick was right: the sails were not on fire, but nevertheless smoke was coming from beneath them. And yes! From some of the ports just aft of the sails, the wisps were just starting, barely distinguishable. In fact without a glass they would not be seen and anyway Southwick was sharp eyed to have noticed the smoke under the sail.

But even as Ramage watched the smoke from the forward ports, just abaft the draped sails, got thicker. He could see it with the naked eye now, and yes, it was moving aft, coming from other ports.

'She's on fire!' he suddenly exclaimed. 'She has a big fire forward, and it's spreading aft rapidly. It might reach the magazine! Mr Aitken, bear away - we don't want to be near an explosion.'

He could picture blazing wreckage raining down out of the sky and lodging in the Dido's sails, apart from falling on her decks - which, fortunately, were still wetted and sanded.

CHAPTER NINE

The sudden order shouted by the bosun's mates, 'Firemen to the upperdeck!' startled Stafford and his gun's crew as they waited for the Dido to cross the Junon's stern. None of them were down in the general quarters, watch and station bill as firemen, but fire in a ship was a seaman's greatest fear. To begin with they thought the Dido was on fire, and Stafford was already looking round at the powder monkeys, ready to order them to throw their cartridges of powder over the side. But quickly the word spread through the ship: it was the Junon that was on fire, and the reason the Dido's firemen were being ordered to the upperdeck was to deal with any blazing debris should she blow up.

Stafford immediately ran to the gunport and looked at the Junon, now broad on the Dido's beam. His sharp eyes soon spotted the smoke coming from under the foresails draped over her side, and then saw the wisps of smoke curling out of the after gunports.

'It's her all right!' he shouted to the others. 'She has a fire forward - I reckon it's right over her magazine. No wonder they passed the word for firemen; if she blows up she could shower us.'

'Fire,' Gilbert muttered. 'The poor devils. She's an unlucky ship. To be raked four times . . .'

'She was unlucky to meet Mr Ramage,' Rossi said. 'Don't waste too much sympathy on them!'

'Yes, but we weren't.'

'No, thanks to Mr Ramage having some tricks to play. But we could have been blown out of the water. Look what we did to that frigate, and we're only one seventy-four. Imagine what it would have been like to have one each side.'

'No.' Gilbert said emphatically, 'I don't want to imagine it.'

'Well, just because you're French don't get weepy over the Junon.'

'I'm not weepy. I'm thinking of six hundred men who risk being blown to pieces.'

'But they're French,' Rossi protested. 'If we were on fire no one in the Junon would give a damn; in fact they'd be cheering.'

Stafford called from the gunport: 'We're bearing away, putting a distance between us.'

'Thank goodness for that,' Louis said. 'It will soon be raining burning beams.'

Stafford inspected the Junon again and announced: 'The fire's getting worse: the smoke is beginning to pour out of her hatchways, too. It's even coming out of her stern ports: she's making just enough headway to make a draught through the ship.'

A minute or two later he added: 'She's trying to heave-to. They're backing the maintopsail. Ah, they've got a fire engine to work. They're squirting water down the forehatch.'

Rossi went to the gunport to have a look for himself and announced: 'No fire engine is going to put out that fire!'

'I 'ope they've flooded the 'anging magazine,' Stafford said. 'Otherwise she'll blow in the next five minutes. Oh, we're heaving-to as well,' he added, as he watched the waves and heard the slamming of sails overhead. 'That's nice o' 'em, we'll have a good view.'

The words were hardly out of his mouth when there was an enormous red and yellow flash, as though someone had suddenly opened a huge furnace door, and then a thunderclap as if they had just slammed it shut. The Junon's outline was replaced by a cloud of smoke from which yards, masts, beams and dozens of pieces of burning wood lanced up into the air in geometrically precise parabolas and splashed down into the sea.

Slowly the wind dispersed the cloud of yellow, black and grey smoke, and there was no sign of the ship: simply a turbulent ring of water pitted with splashes.

Up on the quarterdeck Ramage shut his telescope with a click and said to Aitken: 'Hoist out the boats and let's get under way: make for the spot where she exploded, then the boats won't have to row so far.'

Southwick sighed and took off his hat, running his hand through his hair in a familiar gesture. 'I think that's the biggest explosion I've ever seen. I don't suppose we'll find many survivors.'

'No, but we'll look. Anyone who survived that deserves to be rescued.' He pulled out the tubes of his telescope again and adjusted it, then he looked over the larboard bow at the two frigates, which were about a mile away. 'The Heron and the Requin are still at it. As soon as we've got the boats in the water, we'll leave them to search for men and go up and put a stop to those frigates squabbling. They must be causing a lot of casualties.'

The maintopsail yard was braced sharp up as the last of the boats were lowered into the water and the crews scrambled down rope ladders into them. Ramage directed Jackson to steer for the oily-smooth patch of water in which an almost incredible amount of debris was floating.

'Enough wreckage there to build two ships - or so it seems,' commented Aitken. 'Plenty for survivors to cling to.'

The Dido hardened in sheets and braces and headed up towards the two frigates which, almost hidden in a cloud of gun smoke, were now lying with their bows to the north, and side by side, pounding each other with their broadsides.