He had bribed, threatened and driven almost every man in the yard until he had obtained more or less what he needed. It seemed they saw his departure as the only way of returning to their own affairs.

He had walked around his new command in her dock with mixed feelings. Above all, the excitement and the challenge she represented. Gone were the pangs he had felt in Falmouth whenever he had seen a man-of-war weathering the headland below the castle. But also he had discovered something more.

His last command had been Phalarope, a frigate very similar to Undine, if slightly longer by a few feet. To Bolitho she had been everything, perhaps because they had come through so much together. In the West Indies, at the battle of the Saintes he had felt his precious Phalarope battered almost to a hulk beneath him. There would never, could never, be another like her. But as he had walked up and down the stone wall of the dock he had, sensed a new elation.

Halfway through the hurried overhaul he had received an unheralded visit from Rear Admiral Sir John Winslade, the man who had greeted him at the Admiralty. He had given little away, but after a cursory inspection of the ship and Bolitho's preparations he had said, 'I can tell you now. I'm sending you to India. That's all I can reveal for the moment.' He had run his eye over the few riggers working on yards and shrouds and had added dryly, 'I only hope for your sake you'll be ready on time.'

There was a lot in what Winslade had hinted. Officers on halfpay were easy to obtain. To crew a King's ship without the urgency of a war or the pressgang was something else entirely. Had Undine been sailing in better-known waters things might have been different. And had Bolitho been a man other than himself he might have been tempted to keep her destination a secret until he had signed on sufficient hands and it was too late for them to escape.