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him from his counterpart on the enemy deck. He could feel the mouths of a score of muskets trained on his face, see the pirate gun crews mustered about their cannons, standing ready, slow match smoldering in their hands. The Algerian captain made a gesture with his forearm that required no translation and the laughter of her crew floated over waves stained red with sunset.
    “Fucking rag-head,” Sergeant Richardson muttered with indignation beside John. “One mortar, sir. Just the one, that’s all I’d need if we aimed it right.”
    Behind the galley he could see the Meteor ’s pinnace tacking for another attempt to slip past. Hall was just visible in the bow, clutching a writhing goat to his buff waistcoat, his powdered face whiter still with fear. A net full of chickens squawked at his feet among the baskets of oranges and green-stuff, eloquent of a successful reprovisioning trip now gone horribly wrong.
    “They’re playing with us.” John ground his teeth with a little squeaking noise. “I am so tempted to do as you suggest, Sergeant. But if it’s war they want, let them start it themselves. I’ll not be goaded into ceding the moral high ground.”
    The wind veered. Kelly, in the pinnace, put her about in a flash and surged past the stern of the galley, the little craft heeling so that the boom almost trailed in the sea and water ran clear like varnish down her port gunwale.
    “Stand by to haul those men aboard. Lively now!” cried John, watching the scramble on deck with a slow inward burn of annoyance. By the time the boatswain had whipped some order into the brawl of over-eager hands the pinnace lay alongside and the galley had turned about her centre, coming straight for them. Bleating and kicking on the end of a rope the goat swayed in mid air, and men hauled hand over hand to bring the pinnace aboard, Hall and the boat crew scrambling up the side like reckless monkeys. Closer now, oars beat against the water as the beakhead of the galley drove like a spear at the Meteor ’s head.
    “All aboard!” Armitage shrieked.
“Go about!”
Turning away from the harbor, John put the Meteor before
    the wind, spreading all the sails she would carry. For ten long, humiliating minutes, the galley kept pace, but then even her seasoned oarsmen began to flag. The ketch—still gathering speed— pulled away. Running away , John thought sourly, out into the safety of the open sea. Not a shot had been fired, but it was plain from the crew’s ugly faces and bitter whispers that they too felt the sting of defeat.
    Wondering if he could call honor satisfied now, head to the rendezvous at the naval base in Gibraltar and report to Saunders that he had tried—and failed—John looked down into the waist of the ship. The goat baa -ed at him indignantly then made herself universally beloved by butting the boatswain. Hall brushed himself down with a sniff of distaste, while Armitage put his hand in his pocket and quickly pulled it out again, sticky pink jelly coating his fingers.
“Where is…?” asked John in sudden panic, checking again, just as Kelly ran up the quarter-deck ladder and strangled his woolen hat between his hands.
     
“Oh, sir! They’ve taken Mr. Donwell, sir.”
    “You ain’t gonna leave him there.” Higgins brought in a ridiculously elegant tea tray complete with green and gold trimmed white pot, water jug, milk jug, sugar basin, tongs, Sevres porcelain cup delicate as sea foam, and a pewter spoon that John remembered seeing last in the doctor’s jar of leeches. Despite the fact that livery would make him look like a performing ape, Higgins fancied himself as a footman and had made up for John’s poverty by persuading various members of the wardroom to donate their treasures for the captain’s use.
    “I am not.” John took a cup of tea, poured in milk and sniffed. “The goat’s settled then?”
“She’s champion. Two pints this evening and she ate the ribbons off Jack Nastyface’s trousers,