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day older. What is your secret? You have a recipe for eternal youth! … Mr Bowen, I hope my son has not been giving you too many patients! Oh, so few? That’s the way it should be in every action!”
    She had just spoken to all the officers, with the Earl walking beside her, when seamen hoisting on the fall of the rope brought the red chair up above the bulwarks and Jackson hauled gently on the guy, fitted to an eyebolt beneath the seat, to make sure Gianna landed in exactly the right place. She was smiling with pleasure and recognized Jackson at once, laughing as he steadied the chair while Aitken appeared, apparently from nowhere, to swing back the bar and help her stand up.
    â€œBlower” Martin, fourth in the line of officers waiting to be introduced to her, was suddenly finding it hard to breathe: he seemed to have an invisible band round his throat, like the Spanish garotte, and it happened the moment he first saw the Marchesa’s face as the chair rose above the level of the hammock nettings on top of the bulwarks. He realized that without any qualification or argument she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes widely spaced and—from this distance—seeming black. Her hair was as black as a raven’s wing. As she stepped out of the chair, he saw she was tiny. Her dress was a very pale green, probably silk. Laughing over something Mr Aitken had said, she was pointing to Jackson. Now she was pointing at Southwick and hurrying—to Martin it seemed like dancing—over to embrace the old man. Embrace be damned, she had just given him a smacking kiss on the cheek. He was laughing and now they were dancing a jig—and from aloft the ship’s company were cheering and singing!
    Martin glanced round nervously: such behaviour with Admiral the Earl of Blazey on board, quite apart from the Countess of Blazey, could get Mr Ramage into trouble … Then he saw them both laughing, obviously delighted, and remembered that the Marchesa lived with them, was young Paolo’s aunt, and that she and Mr Ramage were in love.
    Now he understood why seamen like Jackson, Stafford and Rossi talked so much about her: she had more life and high spirits in her little finger than any woman William Martin had previously seen had in her whole body. Jackson and another seaman with Mr Ramage had saved her life. That was some years ago now, but Martin remembered he had seen the spot where it had happened: someone had pointed it out during the attack on Port Ercole with the bomb ketches. He felt a sudden jealousy: to have helped rescue such a lady, and to know her so that when she kissed your cheek the whole ship’s company spontaneously cheered.
    Five minutes later, as she was formally introduced to the
Calypso
’s officers, “Blower” Martin was tongue-tied, able only to stare and then to bow, and it was Paolo who stepped forward and described how they had been in action together
“tante volte,”
which Martin guessed must mean several times, and how Lieutenant Martin had commanded the bomb ketch. The Marchesa knew all about it, and made him describe how they had aimed the mortars.
    With all the introductions over, Ramage murmured to Aitken, and later repeated to Southwick, his thanks for the reception. When the men were piped down from aloft and descended like swarming starlings, excited at the presence of the Marchesa and the Captain’s parents, Ramage said to Aitken: “You aren’t going to get much work out of them until we leave!”
    â€œWe’re only doing the dockyard’s work, sir,” he said sourly. “Eighty dockyard men were allocated to get the guns and round shot out. I haven’t seen one of them. It took me three days of bullying at the Commissioner’s office to get the hoys, and I began swaying the guns over the side with my own men just to get the job done. That damned Commissioner probably