A plank had been fitted to the bulwarks by the mainchains, hinged so that the inboard end could be lifted up, and at the moment a body rested on it, covered by a Union Flag. Brewster read the service in a low, even voice and most of the Didos were gathered round him, bareheaded and listening attentively.

The body belonged to one of the new Didos: Ramage did not recognize the name, except as an entry in the Muster Book, and he was relieved that it was not a Calypso. In fact, not one of the men killed had been a Calypso, a piece of chance which gave him grim satisfaction. Yet he felt it was wrong: he should not favour the former Calypsos; he now commanded the Dido, and every man on board should have an equal status.

Now Brewster was saying that the men had lost a shipmate, and that somewhere a family had lost a son or a father, and a woman had probably been left a widow. The good thing was, Ramage realized, that Brewster sounded as though he cared. Ramage was reminded of a line by John Donne - something to the effect that 'Each man's death diminishes me'. Brewster gave the impression of being diminished, and Ramage guessed that the men sensed it.

Then Brewster reached the end of the brief service and a couple of burly seamen up-ended the plank while a third held on to the Union Flag. The body in its hammock slid into the sea and vanished, the body weighted down by a couple of roundshot placed at the man's feet before the hammock was finally sewn up.

Brewster stood still, Prayer Book in hand, his vestments tugged by the wind, while the next body was placed under the flag on the plank. Once again he read the funeral service, and he had a happy knack of making it sound fresh; there was no sense that he was repeating parrot-fashion a service that he would have to repeat five times.

Finally the plank tilted for the fifth and last time and Brewster led the men in a hymn. He had chosen one which was a favourite. The men sang it with gusto, and Ramage realized that as soon as they dispersed they would be chattering among themselves, happily, the last few grim minutes forgotten. It was not that these men were cold-blooded or hard-hearted: death was something they had to take in their stride. Dwelling on it would probably drive a man mad, so he mourned at the funeral, sang a hymn and meant it, and then went about his business, ready to go into action again.

CHAPTER TEN

Ramage took his Journal from the drawer. He noted the latitude - the Dido was now sweeping south and already down level with Guadeloupe - and the longitude, which put them about seven hundred miles short of Barbados.

He still had to write his report on the Junon and Sylphe affair, ready for the admiral at Barbados, and he knew he must get it done quickly because the details were already fading in his memory.

How was Eames getting on? He decided he did not envy him: getting the Heron back to Plymouth with all those prisoners on board, while shepherding the Requin, would be a constant worry. Apart from fearing that his own prisoners would rise on him, he must watch the Requin all the time, looking for signs of trouble on board. Ramage shrugged: Eames was quite content because - as he had freely admitted - he had never been lucky with prize money, and now he had head money, too, for all the prisoners he had taken from the Sylphe: head money - calculated on the number of prisoners taken - which had come without having to fire a single shot. Ramage could have made a claim for a share, but had decided against it because Eames had put up a spirited fight against the Requin.

Distances, noon positions, wind directions and strength, courses steered: the facts required for his Journal were mundane: nowhere could he write how exciting it was to be commanding a ship of the line sweeping down to the West Indies in the Trade winds, feeling alive as the ship pitched and rolled her way westward and the sun was warmer every day.

Nor, for instance, could one mention the flying fish spurting likesmall silver arrows out of the sea and following the crests and troughs until they vanished into the water again. Occasionally they flew high enough to land on deck - twenty or thirty feet - to flap about helplessly until snatched up by seamen who would then try to bribe the cook to boil them. They looked like fat herrings with wings and had much the same colouring and, one of the men had once told Ramage, much the same taste.

The men liked watching the schools of dolphins which played round the ship from time to time. Play was the right word: they raced and cavorted round the ship like children playing chase in a street; they delighted in swimming fast across the Dido's bow, as if in competition to see which could pass closest to the stem without actually touching. Their speed was amazing: they made the Dido, doing eight knots, look as though she was stopped in the water.

And then, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, there were the birds - Mother Carey's chickens, swooping low over the water but never seeming to eat or, for that matter, rest. And then came the - to Ramage - exciting day when they sighted their first tropic bird. All white, it always flew with strong wing beats, and was usually going east or west. The first he had seen this voyage passed eastward at eight o'clock in the morning and returned westward at six in the evening. Where had it come from? Where was it going?

Ramage had often see colonies of them on the islands: they nested among the cliffs away from people - he remembered seeing them on the west coast of St Eustatius, the north-western side of St Martin and the south and west sides of Antigua, but one rarely sailed from one island to another without at least one of them flying overhead. The odd thing was one could never determine their destination: they never seemed to be bound for any particular island, yet they always flew in a dead straight line. Then there were the whales. One would suddenly become conscious of them surfacing almost alongside, silent and enormous, but occasionally one heard and saw them spouting water into the air. They, like the dolphins, were not alarmed by the sight of a ship of the line ploughing through the water: in fact the bulk seemed to attract them closer, instead of frightening them off.

But one of the joys of a seventy-four, as far as Ramage was concerned, was 'the captain's walk', the balcony built outside the cabin across the stern and stretching from one side to the other. He could pace along it, looking down at the Dido's curling wake, and he found himself fascinated by the loops and whorls the ship left in the water. At night there was often heavy phosphorescence, when the Dido would seem to be leaving a wide trail of light in the water. At times it was light enough to read a newspaper, and once when talking to Aitken out there he had been able to see every detail of the Scotsman's features.

More surprising in the darkness were the antics of the fish caught in the Dido's wake: he could see them swimming under water, leaving trails of phosphorescent light. It was ironic that one only saw them in the dark of night: in daylight the reflection from the top of the water prevented any sight of them. Then occasionally in daylight - as if to remind one that the sea was unfriendly - Ramage saw the fin of a shark cutting through the water. And from time to time there would be a sudden flurry as dozens of flying fish suddenly took to the air, or other fish leapt out of the water in a desperate attempt to escape, as some predator attacked them. The effect was the same as throwing a heavy stone into the middle of a pond - the splashes of escaping fish radiated outwards like the spokes of a wheel.

Stafford put down his mug and pointed at Gilbert. 'Yus, you're going to enjoy the islands. Why, you'll be sucking the monkey with the best of them!'