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o’ religious nonsense, and
then
loses the second one at the end of ‘is ‘oneymoon.
    â€œI wonder what
did
‘appen to Lady Sarah. A real lady, she was. I’m not saying nothing against the Marcheezer, Rosey, but you must admit she was a bit of an ‘andful at times. Very Italian, when she got angry.” He looked round warily at Rossi. “Nothing wrong with that, o’ course—after all, she was used to being the ruler of Volterra, with a palace an’ all. ‘Ad to laugh when she used to come the empress with the captain!”
    â€œHe had the measure of her,” Jackson nodded understandingly. “He could handle her. She never did realize that however much she stamped her foot and rolled her eyes and demanded this and that, she usually ended up doing just what the captain intended all the time. But he always left her thinking she’d won the day—that was the secret of his success.”
    â€œHo yes, the captain was smart enough,” Stafford agreed. “But Lady Sarah was always calm. A proper
English
lady. They’re different from foreigners, you know.” He nodded confidently, as if remembering the lessons learned during a long string of amorous and cosmopolitan conquests. “They don’t yell and wave their arms about an’ put on airs and graces.”
    â€œIs very dull, though, married to the calm sort. Like having sunshine everyday. You need a gale occasionally for comparing,” Rossi said emphatically.
    â€œDon’t you believe it,” Jackson said firmly. “That’s why I like the Tropics. Always warm and most of the time sunny. I don’t want to be forever wondering if tomorrow we’re going to have snow or rain or a minute’s glimpse of pale sun. An English summer is like getting a sample of the year’s weather all in one week!”
    Stafford patted his stomach. “Breakfast … and it’s Louis’s week as mess cook.”
    Louis was one of the Frenchmen who had escaped with Ramage and Sarah to join the fleet off Brest, and because the tiny group were Royalists, they had accepted the bounty and now served in the Royal Navy. They had joined the trio of Jackson, Stafford, and Rossi, and as a result, they now spoke with the sharp vowels of a Genoese accent mingling with its English equivalent, the slang of the Cockney.

CHAPTER TWO
    R AMAGE stood at the taffrail looking astern. The sun had lifted clear of the eastern horizon and as the
Calypso
stretched into the Mediterranean, keeping to the middle of the Strait to avoid being becalmed under the Spanish cliffs, he stared at the African coast. With Gibraltar and Spain on one side and the mountains of Africa on the other, the Strait was known to the ancients as the Pillars of Hercules—and the pillars were perpetuated in the Spanish dollar sign: the Spaniards drew two vertical lines for the two pillars, and then entwined them with an “S”-shaped garland.
    In the distance Ramage could now see the Ras el Xakkar of the Arabs, the north-western tip of Africa and known to British seamen as Cape Espartel, the southern gateway to the Strait and unmistakable because of a long ridge of rounded mountains, which ended just behind it in a great, black hummock, Jebel Quebir. Two or three miles beyond as the coast trended south, out of sight just now, was Yibila, only 450 feet high but a perfectly-shaped breast with a dark-coloured cairn on top—the reason for its Arab name, “The Nipple.”
    The African coast lining the Strait was harsh: indented cliffs seemed to have been chewed by some great prehistoric monster, and were littered by many rocks, white-collared where the sea broke round them. The first port was Tangier, known to the Romans as Tingis and later called Tanjah by the Arabs. What a mixture of Spanish and Arab names there was along this coast. Both the Spanish and the Moorish sides of the Strait showed just how much the two