By the time Ramage looked aft again to the maincourse, he saw it was now ablaze and the topmen were scrambling back along the footropes to safety. The wind was spreading the fire and Ramage guessed that the flames would run up the rigging and set the topmast alight.

Both the forecourse and the maincourse were now well ablaze and the mizen topsail was now burning. He could see the topmen who had set that sail alight now scrambling down the mizen ratlines. The three blazing sails looked like fiery crosses and Ramage imagined what a fine sight they must make from the Dido: Aitken and his men would have no doubt about the success of the operation so far.

He could hear the crackling of flames above the shouting and clanging of cutlasses, and wind eddies were now bringing smoke from the burning sails down to deck level. He just had time to ward off a boarding pike wielded by a huge Frenchman and was about to lunge at him with his sword when the man collapsed and a jubilant Orsini, waving a bloodstained cutlass, shouted: 'Not many left now!'

Nor were there: the Didos were forcing the Frenchmen aft, past the mainshrouds and into the arms of the men who had boarded from aft: the French were caught in between. And, almost more important, Ramage saw that other Didos following up the boarders were crouching down, setting new fires.

For a moment he thought of the French captain: the man would be in agony, seeing his ship slowly begin to blaze, set on fire by an enemy he could not dislodge. And he must be cursing at having put ashore some of his men: he would now be glad of anyone who could wield a cutlass or stab with a pike.

Southwick was gesticulating aloft and Ramage looked up to see that the great foreyard itself was now on fire, the dry wood obviously set ablaze by the burning canvas. Then he noticed that flames or sparks had set fire to the next sail: the foretopsail was now beginning to burn.

There were now twenty or more fires burning on the fo'c'sle: the burning sail spread about by Jackson and Stafford had started three or four others, and the original one round the forebitts had spread across twelve feet or more of deck, lapping at the foot of the foremast like flaming waves at a mangrove root.

The fires, Ramage realized, were more than the French could put out without using a fire engine: no buckets would douse the flames. And the fire engine was not on deck: it would take them ten minutes to manhandle it up from below.

Just at that moment the whole maincourse dropped to the deck as the ropebands burned through along with the gaskets. The blazing mass of canvas blanketed almost the whole width of the ship, and at that moment Ramage knew the ship was doomed: the canvas was a massive torch. The flames lit up the whole ship, and nothing now could save her.

The time had come to save the Didos. Already the French were breaking off the fight and dashing to the blazing sail, wrenching at the unburned parts in a hopeless attempt to pull them clear. But the sail was enormous: it lay across the deck like a sinuous fiery dragon, spurting flame and sparks.

The fires were now crackling like burning bracken, and the Achille was lit up as though by a dozen small suns. The Frenchmen who had been fighting on the gangway were now all struggling with the burning sail, and the Didos were watching them.

'Why don't we attack 'em?' bawled Southwick.

'It's time for us to go,' Ramage shouted back. 'The fires have taken a good hold.'

With that he shouted: 'Didos - to the boats!'

The nearest men heard him and began to make their way forward, ready to climb down into the boats. What about the boarding parties aft - would they be able to see that the forward parties were withdrawing? He could not risk it, and looked round for Orsini.

'Can you get through to the after parties and tell them to withdraw? At once!'

'Aye aye, sir,' said Orsini, delighted at being given a special task. There was so much movement amidships that he saw no difficulty getting through in the confusion.

As he walked forward Ramage was surprised at how successful his men had been in setting fires. Apart from the big blazes where the foresail had dropped down and round the forebitts, there were many more smaller ones where flames had got a firm grip on woodwork. A six-foot section of the bulwark was now burning fiercely in one place and a twelve-foot section in another. The whole deck was burning at the foot of the belfry and the galley chimney stood up amid a sea of flames.

The boarders were now climbing down into the boats, and Ramage reflected on how he had imagined this episode might have ended: that the French would drive them back into the boats amid a withering fire of musketry. Instead the men were boarding with as little concern as they had shown when they first boarded the boats from the Dido.

He and Southwick had looked at the bodies left on the gangway. Five Didos were dead, and he saw that four wounded were being helped down into the boats. There were many French dead on the section of the gangway where they had been fighting. There were more aft. How many of the after boarding parties had lost their lives?

Finally the last of the men had scrambled off the Marine's walk and the beakhead, and Ramage said to Southwick: 'It's our turn now.'

'Not as agile as I was,' grunted the old master as he clambered through the headrails, 'and this blasted scabbard hooks in everything. '

'At least we can see this time,' Ramage said. When they had climbed up it had been by the light of the stars, which were often hidden by clouds. Now every detail showed up in the light of the flames. In fact, Ramage thought, they add an urgency to everything: the flames must now be spreading down below, making an octopus-like progress towards the magazine.

And when they reached the magazine, he thought grimly, we all want to be at least half a mile away: the explosion will tear the Achille apart and scatter the wreckage like chaff before the wind.

And, as he scrambled into the launch, Jackson giving him a helping hand, he realized the wind had freshened: the boats were pitching and rolling as the waves hit the Achille and swirled back. A wind . . . the bellows that would spread all those fires. He glanced up and was startled at the view from this angle: the burning sails were making great crosses of fire, and the foreyard was well ablaze. Any moment the slings and jeers would burn through and it would come crashing down, like the gates of hell opening.

The gates of hell... he had thought of that because the whole scene was unreal. Now the Achille was mottled with so many fires that even if they had a couple of fire engines working, as well as all the washdeck pumps, they could never control half of them.

'Shove off,' Ramage ordered Jackson, and he commented to Southwick, who was alongside him in the pinnace: 'It's a terrible sight.'

'Aye, it is that. The French captain must be going mad - he hasn't even got the fire engine on deck.'

'He never expected an attack like this. He didn't even expect boarders, judging from the lack of sentries.'

'What did he expect us to do - stay on board playing cards and drinking gin?'

'Apparently,' Ramage said with a grin. 'I think he made the mistake of thinking that because he was stuck on a rock then we wouldn't make a move, either. Or else - more than likely – he knows his ship is finished and assumed we knew, so that we wouldn't try anything.'

'You mean we might have done all this -' Southwick waved towards the burning ship, '- for nothing?'

'It's a possibility,' Ramage said. 'But it wasn't a risk I could take. It seemed to me that fetching shipwrights from Fort Royal, apart from using their own carpenters, could put the ship to rights and she could be towed off. And that's what the admiral would think.'