Ramage soon found he had a small pile of paper on his desk, notes for Aitken, Rennick and the other lieutenants. As he collected up the pages he told himself that it was not possible to plan against all the eventualities: things happened that no man could have anticipated, and by giving too many instructions it was possible to paralyse the officers, making them too rigid to respond to something out of the ordinary.

He leafed through his notes. Yes, that was about right: he was telling them what he wanted to happen, without making the orders too rigid.

He called to the sentry to pass the word for the first lieutenant. When Aitken arrived Ramage told him to alter course for Cap Salomon, and as soon as they were off it to make the signal for the Scourge's captain to come on board. The captain of the brig had to be told what was going on. There was nothing for the brig to do, other than continue her patrol as usual, but she had to be warned to expect fireworks and to take no notice should she see rockets lighting up the sky from the direction of the French frigate.

It took four hours to get up close enough to make a signal to the Scourge and get Lieutenant Bennett on board. The brig's captain listened to what Ramage told him without enthusiasm. Ramage had half expected that the young man would want to take part in the expedition, supplying at least a couple of boats, but there was no such suggestion: Bennett heard Ramage out in silence, and then returned to his ship.

By now it was dusk, and Ramage ordered the Dido to return to Diamond Rock and heave-to for the night. As soon as they were back off the Rock, Ramage sent for Aitken, Southwick and Rennick, and when they were seated in his cabin he said: 'Tomorrow we go to the westwards, out of sight of land, and practise the cutting out.'

'What do we use as a frigate?' asked Rennick.

'The Dido. Her lowerdeck gunports are 7 feet 6 inches off the water forward and 5 feet 8 inches amidships. With the gunports open, they'll be just about right for the men to climb up from the boats. We might fire a few muskets off over their heads, just to get them used to the idea.'

'The new men need it,' Rennick said. 'The men I brought from the Calypso have smelled powder many times. They'll steady the new men, if need be.'

Ramage told Aitken: 'Don't choose only former Calypsos among the seamen; mix in some new men. We've got to get them blooded.'

Aitken laughed at Ramage's unexpected use of the hunting term. 'You don't have to listen to the Calypsos grumbling at being left out. They will regard the new men as a crowd of Johnnie Comelatelys. I take it you'll want your usual boat's crew in the launch?'

'Of course,' Ramage said with a grin. 'The captain's boat has the captain's crew. Jackson and the rest of them wield useful cutlasses.'

'Seems as though I am the only one being left out,' grumbled Southwick. 'You all go off on a cutting out expedition and leave me here on board twiddling my thumbs.'

'I don't regard being left in command of a 74-gun ship as twiddling your thumbs,' Ramage said firmly. 'Think back to the Kathleen cutter and the Triton brig - you never thought that one day you'd be commanding a ship of the line.'

'Nor did you!' Southwick retorted. 'But the point is I'm not commanding her in action. I'm just acting as a horseholder while you are off enjoying a good fight. Why not leave Kenton or Martin in command?'

'Because they don't have your experience. If something unexpected happens and the Dido has to do something - and you know well enough the chances of that - I would sooner rely on you doing the right things than one of those lads. They're keen and willing, but they just haven't your experience.'

'Oh, very well,' said Southwick slightly mollified. 'It's just that I enjoy a fight, too!'

What Ramage knew he could not say was that there were two sides to an action - a lesson he had learned the hard way. There was the fighting, which was usually straightforward, and there was writing the despatch about it afterwards. It looked bad if a captain wrote that he had left command of his ship with, say, the third lieutenant. It was all right to leave it with the first lieutenant (who was in any case second-in-command) or with the master, who though a warrant and not a commission officer, was always experienced in ship handling. An admiral (and their Lordships) would accept a master where they would not accept a third or fourth lieutenant. And, Ramage had to admit, it was a reasonable enough attitude. It just made it hard on Southwick, who all too often was the one who was left behind.

It was a hot and humid night, cloudless but dark apart from the starlight. The wind was light, tending to fitful. The Dido had just passed Cap Salomon about three miles off and Pointe de la Baleine was now broad on the starboard bow. It was, Ramage reflected, a peaceful beginning to what was going to be a bloody night. The Dido was gliding along in a calm sea, leaving little more than a hint of a phosphorescent wake.

Ramage still found it hard to believe, on a night such as this, that he commanded a ship of the line, and he still marvelled at the complexity and sheer size of the ship. For instance, it had taken two thousand large trees, each weighing a couple of tons, to build her. Her sails - hardly strained in this wind - totalled 10,700 yards of canvas, and weighed more than six tons. The standing rigging weighed twenty-seven tons and the running rigging seventeen tons.

When one started thinking about the weights involved, the figures were startling - 260 tons of water, 52 tons of coals and wood, 214 tons of provisions, spirits and slops. The men and their effects accounted for 65 tons. And he had forgotten all the blocks - which people on shore insisted on calling pulleys - which with the rigging totalled more than 54 tons.

And for fighting there were 335 barrels of powder and 79 tons of shot, while the guns weighed a total of 178 tons, and the powder came to more than 20 tons.

And all of that was gliding along, pushed by the sails which at the moment obscured large rectangles of the star-filled sky. The downdraught from the mainsail was cooling, but the ship still seemed hot, the heat absorbed from the sun during the day. Astern six boats were towing on painters of varying lengths, and at last the grindstone had been stowed again after grinding away most of the day as the men sharpened cutlasses, tomahawks and boarding pikes.

The guns were loaded and run out. Many of the regular guns' crews had been chosen as boarders or formed part of the boats' crews, so earlier their replacements had been exercised - just in case the Dido needed to use her guns. Now the Marines were drawn up on deck for the final inspection by Rennick and his lieutenants. On Ramage's direct order the Marines were not dressed in their regular uniforms with pipeclayed crossbelts. Instead they wore shirts and trousers: clothing better suited to scrambling aboard an enemy frigate. They were barefooted, too, though Ramage suspected that many of them would be stamping their feet out of sheer habit.

Only Southwick stood by the binnacle with him: the other lieutenants were with their boarding parties, giving them last-minute instructions and making sure that none of them was drunk or had any liquor with him. It only needed a drunken man to laugh or cry out to spoil the surprise.

Southwick put down the nightglass. 'We are coming up to Pointe Blanche and the Ile à Ramiers. Not far to go now.'

Not far indeed, Ramage thought: from the island to the anchored frigate was about three miles. Another mile and the Dido would heave-to and send off the boats. Ramage felt a tightening of his stomach muscles. Boarding was one of the most unpredictable of operations. It was, he always thought from what he had read of other ships' experiences, one or the other: a complete disaster with very heavy casualties, or a complete success with hardly any casualties. There seemed to be no in between: no happy medium. Obviously the more complete the surprise the more the chance of success, but he had no idea whether the frigate had guard boats out. It would seem an obvious precaution to have a boat full of armed seamen or Marines rowing round the ship all the time it was dark; on the other hand the French frigate might feel safe anchored under the protection of the guns of Fort St Louis. Well, if they bumped into a guard boat they would be in trouble - not because a guard boat could do much harm to six heavily armed boats but because it would raise the alarm and spoil the surprise. So, he could only hope that the frigate had been anchored in the Passe du Carénage for a long time and had become used to the only threat being a tiny brig sailing back and forth several miles to seaward.