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not his element, and the variations that were possible presented too much of a mystery. He shot down the companionway, just as much to get away from those stares, as to find out what kind of cargo the ship was carrying.
    Hair awry, sword out, with blood on his face from the fighting on deck, his appearance in the glim from a single guttering lantern made the downcast prisoners, sat in a circle, recoil. The questions he asked fired off in rapid and fluent French, got a response before any of the speakers realised that silence would have served their country better.
    The captain had been on the wheel, killed by a musket ball as the redcoats came aboard. All three ships were laden with flour and barrels of salted meats, food for the Calvi garrison. They knew nothing of negotiations to end the siege, their arrival seemingly fortuitous rather than planned. The information didn’t aid George Markham’s thinking very much. If anything the heat and stench in the cramped ’tween decks made it harder to draw cogent conclusions. But that changed as he hit the fresh air, and he observed the two other Tarantines had now drawn abreast, and were heading into the arc of safety created by the fortress guns.
    Both cannons boomed again, the ball from the nearest flying uselessly overhead. The other was more telling, landing close enough to one of the frigate’s boats to make it change to a safer course. Yet Markham knew those sailors would come on, and wondered to what purpose; to support him in an action he couldn’t win. If the armed French cutter had wanted to sink the ship, they would have begun the process by now, and he would have been in no position to oppose it. Therefore it was obviousthat they wanted both vessel and cargo, so his job was to deny them that.
    ‘Brownlee, is there any way to get the boats coming to our aid to sheer off?’
    That threw the coxswain, who until now had answered every request put to him with heartening speed.
    ‘The next thing I need to know is how to sink this damned ship.’
    ‘Sink her?’
    ‘Yes. We’ll get everybody back in the barge, and smash a hole in her hull.’
    ‘That’ll take an age your honour. If you want her destroyed, best way is to torch the bugger. And the flames would stand as the signal you want to send to our boats.’
    ‘Lash off the wheel, Brownlee, then tell me how long you need to set your fires.’
    ‘Don’t take more’n a few minutes to torch a ship. All I need do is find a bit of turps or oil.’
    ‘Then get on with it. Set light to some of the damaged rigging first to signal our boats to haul off. Sergeant Rannoch! Sustained volley fire on each cutter in turn if you please.’
    ‘We will not hit much on this swell. That ball that hit the officer was luck.’
    ‘I just want them convinced we intend to make a fight for it. Brownlee and his men are going to start a fire in the holds. We will be back in the barge and well clear before it takes hold.’
    ‘What about the Crapaud prisoners, ’tween decks?’ called one of the sailors.
    ‘They will come with us.’
    Any response was delayed by the discharge of Rannoch’s first salvo, which peppered the water around the French cutter, without doing any harm at all to the occupants.
    ‘That barge’ll be a mite crowded your honour. How the hell are we going to row back to Agamemnon with that number on board.’
    The question stopped everyone for just a second, including the Lobsters reloading the muskets, as even the most feeble brain registered that so close to those armed cutters, there was no way they would get clear, and that they were sinking this ship before surrendering themselves into captivity.
    ‘Don’t harm so much as a hair on them Crapauds’ heads,’ saidBrownlee to his men, as he hurried them back to their tasks. ‘Or it’ll be us that pays when they get us into their dungeons.’
    There was nothing to go aloft on to set alight. What rigging remained was hanging loose, mostly over the side.