Time and experience would show him the real strength and weakness of his new command, but with just a few hours alone in his quarters he had already built up a working picture in his mind. From what he had read and examined it seemed as if the Hyperion under the command of the late Captain Turner had been the essence of normality. The punishment book, which Bolitho had inspected first, and which he always considered to be the safest measure of a ship's captain if not the performance of his command, showed the usual list of petty offenders, with the punishments of flogging and disrating no more or less than one might expect. On the West Indies station there had been various deaths reported from fever and careless shipboard accidents, and the daily log books showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Bolitho leaned back still further in his chair and frowned. It was all so normal, even dull, for a ship of the Hyperion's past and record that it sensed of indifference.

Again he looked around his new quarters, as if to glean some small picture of its late occupant. It was a spacious, even elegant place, he decided, and after the close confines of a frigate seemed palatial.

The day cabin where he was sitting ran the whole width of the stem, over thirty feet from side to side, and the tall stem windows below- which was stationed the handsome carved desk shone in the afternoon sunlight and threw the wide harbour and its anchored shipping across his vision in a colourful panorama.

There was an equally large dining cabin, and on either beam a smaller separate compartment, one for sleeping and the other for the charts.

On a sudden impulse he stood up and walked to the mahogany dining table. It contained six additional leaves, so it seemed that Turner had been a lavish entertainer. All the chairs, as well as the. long bench seat below the stem windown, were of finely tooled green leather, and lying across the normal deck covering of black and white squared canvas was a rich carpet, the price of which Bolitho imagined could have paid a frigate's company of seamen for several months.