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who were watching them curiously, the case balanced between them. 'But I can wait. It'll be Sir Richard afore long, and that's no error! '
    Allday waited until the seamen had gone and said quietly, 'I reckon you'd like to be left alone now, sir. I'll see that your servant is warned about your customs.'
    Bolitho nodded. 'You know me too well.'
    Allday closed the door behind him and glanced coldly at the ramrod-stiff marine sentry outside the cabin. To himself he murmured, 'Better'n you'll ever know.'
    On the quarterdeck once more, Herrick walked slowly to the nettings and stared at the other ships. It had been a bad beginning. For both of them. Perhaps it was all in his own mind, like his dislike for Farquhar. The latter obviously did not give a damn for him, so why should he get so easily ruffled?
    Bolitho had looked exactly as he had known he would. The same gravity which could alter in an instant to a youthful exuberance. His hair was as black as ever, his slim figure no different, apart from the obvious stiffness in his right shoulder. He counted the months. Nearly seven it must be now, when Bolitho had been marked down by a musket ball. T he lines at the corners of his mo uth were a little deeper. Pain, responsibility ? Parts of each, he decided.
    He saw the officer of the watch eyeing him cautiously and called, 'We will signal the squadron, Mr. Kipling. All captains repair on board when I so order.'
    He pictured them putting on their best uniforms. Inch in his tiny cabin, Farquhar in his lavish quarters. But each and all would be wondering, as he was. Where bound? What to expect ? The price for both.
    Alone in his cabin Bolitho heard feet thudding along the deck overhead, and after a momentary hesitation threw off his dress coat with its solitary gold stripe and seated himself at his desk. He slit open the large canvas envelope but still hesitated over reading the neatly written despatches.
    He kept seeing Herrick's anxious face. They were almost the same age, and yet Herrick seemed to have grown much older, his brown hair marked here and there like hoar frost. It was hard not to see him as his best friend. He had to think of him as a strength, the flag captain of a squadron which had never acted as a single unit before. A rough task for any man, and for Thomas Herrick ... he tried to hold back the sudden doubts. Herrick's poor beginnings, the son of a clerk, his very honesty which had marked him out as a man who could be trusted under any known circumstances, could hinder his overall judgement. Herrick was a man who would obey any lawful order without question, with no consideration for his own life or ruin. But to assume control of the squadron if its commodore should die in battle ?
    It was strange to realise that Lysander's original masters had fallen at St. Vincent. Her commodore, George Twyford, had been killed in the first broadsides, and her captain, John Dyke, was even now enduring a living hell in the naval hospital at Haslar, too cruelly maimed even to feed himself. The same ship had survived them and many more. He looked around the neat cabin with its well-carved chairs and dark mahogany table. He could almost feel them watching him.
    He sighed and began to read the despatches.
    *
    Bolitho nodded to the five officers who stood around the cabin table and said, 'Please be seated, gentlemen.'
    He watched them as they eased their chairs towards him, their mixed expressions of pleasure, excitement and curiosity.
    It was a very special moment, and he guessed they were all sharing it with him, if for varied reasons.
    Farquhar had not changed. Slim and elegant, with the self-assur ance he had carried even as a midshipman. Now a post-captain of thirty-two, his ambition shone in his eyes to match his gleaming epaulettes.
    Francis Inch, bobbing and horse-faced, could barely restrain his great beam of welcome. As commander of the sloop he would be vital for inshore work and sweeping ahead of the squadron.
    Raymond Javal,