Southwick interrupted his thoughts. "Not a sail in sight, sir. What time do you want to make a start?"
Ramage took out his watch. Three minutes to seven o'clock. The horizon is clear, the wind is steady ... There's no excuse for putting it off any longer.
"At seven o'clock, Mr Southwick. Pass the word quietly."
As the Master strode away, shoulders braced back, hat jammed square on his head and a picture of confidence, Ramage wondered if he dare call him back and cancel it all. It was a damnably desperate attempt. Yet Yorke was right: if it did not work, they were no worse off - unless the mutineers panicked.
Yorke joined him. "By now you're scared stiff."
"Does it show?" a startled Ramage demanded.
"No, on the contrary, you look your usual arrogant and assured self," Yorke said lightly, "but you'd hardly be human if you weren't scared!"
"What about you?"
"The same. Does it show?"
Ramage laughed. "No, you look your usual debonair self, the idol of-"
"Deck there! Sail ho!" came a shout from the foremast, and Ramage recognized Stafford's voice.
"Deck here - where away?" Much hailed.
"Four points on the larboard bow, sir, just on the 'orizon."
"What can you make of it?"
"Too far off, sir."
"Keep a sharp lookout."
Ramage nodded approvingly: Much was doing well.
"Pass the word for Captain Yorke!" the Mate shouted.
A seaman took up the cry at the companionway leading to the Captain's cabin.
Yorke hurried over, waited a minute, and then called, as though he had just come up the ladder, "What is it, Mr Much?"
"Strange sail, sir, on the larboard bow. Wouldn't expect to see anyone out there unless she was up to mischief."
Ramage knew that at least one of the mutineers would be crouched on the ladder, listening carefully.
"Well, send a man up with a telescope, Mr Much: we don't want to get taken by another French privateer, do we."
"Indeed not! We've enough trouble already."
That, Ramage thought, is the Machiavelli touch: to raise the mutineers' hopes of rescue with the idea that a French ship was on the horizon.
While Much ordered one of the Tritons to take up a telescope, Stafford called again. "May be fairly big, sir, an' I think she's steering east."
Two minutes later the man with the telescope hailed, "Deck there! She's bigger than a privateer an' - oh, there she goes: she's letting fall her royals, sir."
"Very well," Yorke shouted, "let me know the moment you have an idea what she is."
Much had walked forward to the foremast, as though to be nearer the lookouts overhead, and called back to Yorke nervously, "I don't like it, Captain; seems to me anyone out there and on that course must be a ship-o'-war or a privateer."
"Let's hope she's one of ours, then."
"Aye - but could be French or Spanish, hovering off the coast to pick up someone like us."
"You think I ought to send the men to quarters?"
" 'Taint for me to say," Much answered, though the tone of his voice belied the words.
There was an excited yell from the lookout with the telescope. "Deck there! Reckon she's a frigate, an' she looks like a Frenchman."
"Can't you make out her colours?" Yorke demanded anxiously.
"No, sir, she's almost bows-on; but her sheer don't look English."
"You hear that, Mr Much?" Yorke called.
"Course I do, sir," Much said crossly.
"Well then - well, I think we must send the men to quarters! Where the deuce is Mr Southwick? He's supposed to know all about this sort of thing. Hey, you men; pass the word for the Master!"
Yorke turned and winked at Ramage and gave Much a reassuring wave.
Southwick came up the companionway. "You sent for me, sir."
"Of course I did! Are you deaf? Didn't you hear the lookouts hailing?"
"Yes, sir, but you're the Captain," Southwick said sulkily, "and I'm off watch."
"Well, send the men to quarters! Aloft there - what can you see?"
"She's a frigate all right, sir."
"French or British, blast you?"
"Can't rightly say yet, sir."
Southwick began bellowing at the men to go to quarters, and Ramage pictured the mutineers grinning to themselves. And Gianna - if she had followed the instructions passed by Rossi she should be weeping by now...
"I say, Mr Southwick," Yorke said loudly, "I think we should bear away for Porto, you know."
"Never a chance, Mr Yorke. Forty miles to go. Yon frigate will be up with us in half an hour, probably less."
"But we can't fight a frigate!"
"Nor can we run from this one, Mr Yorke." Southwick said sarcastically.
"But if we can't fight and we can't run, what shall we do?"
"Haul down our colours in good time! Won't be the first time for this ship!"
"Oh dear me! Then we'll all be taken prisoner."
"Aye, we'll be prisoners, and our prisoners will become free men, guzzling red wine and pretending they're all heroes."
By now the Tritons had cast the lashings from the guns, tubs of water were in place and Jackson reported to Yorke from abaft the foremast, asking loudly whether the guns should be loaded with roundshot or grape. Yorke told him roundshot, then changed his mind twice before the lookout interrupted by hailing, "Deck there! - the frigate's hauling her wind."
Yorke glanced over the weather side. "We can just see her from the deck now. Send down that blasted telescope!"
Yorke had just the right amount of petulance in his voice, Ramage noted; the uncertain impatience of a badly frightened man who was being overwhelmed by events.
Yorke called to Much, who was still by the foremast. "What do you make of her?"
"She's a frigate right enough."
"French or British?"
"Wouldn't rightly know. But she's coming round to the north a bit so we should make out her colours soon."
"But she's closing fast!"
"We can't do any more'n we're doing, sir, so it don't matter what flag she's flying until we're in range of her guns!"
"I expect a more helpful attitude, Mr Much," Yorke said sharply.
The Tritons had broad grins on their faces: they were enjoying the various exchanges. Ramage looked at his watch, tapped Yorke on the shoulder and waved to Much, who promptly shouted to the lookout above him, "You sure she's French? From the cut of these topsails she looks British to me!"
"The other chap's just gorn down wiv the telescope," Stafford's Cockney voice complained. "I never said nuthing right from the time I got up 'ere about 'er being French. It was 'im. Took the telescope, he did; never let me 'ave a look, he didn't, and now you -"
"Belay it!" Much shouted angrily. "You think she's British?"
"Yus, an' if I 'ad the bring-'em-near I could say for sure."
At that moment Southwick's voice boomed along the deck. "She's British all right: I can't make out her colours yet, but I recognize her."
"Very well," Yorke said loudly, "now what do we do? We don't want her rushing down and shooting at us! Supposing she doesn't see our colours? What then, Mr Southwick, what then, eh?"
"Hoist the private signal."
"What private signal?"
"Mr Ramage had the list in his desk: special one for each day of the month, the challenge and reply."
"Well, go and find it - here are the keys to the desk."
Ramage could imagine the mutineers, at first elated at the thought of a French frigate rescuing them, now terrified at the picture of a British frigate hove-to to windward ... a picture which included them eventually hanging by the neck from a noose at the yardarm. The grim warning contained in the Commission that Ramage read aloud at Lisbon might come to mind, and the reference to the Articles of War. Now the pressure was being slowly applied; pressure that - if everyone kept to the plan - would increase steadily over the next fifteen minutes...