Bolitho hid a smile. 'Quite so.' He waited a moment and then added, 'Well, Mr. Seton, you go down into the boat first, if you please.' He saw the boy's mind wrestling with this early complication in his new career and then said, 'Carry on, Allday.'

He hardly heard the twitter of pipes or the harsh bark of commands, and only when the gig had moved clear of the frigate's hull and the oars sent her skimming across the unbroken water did he permit himself another glance at his new ship.

Allday followed his stare and said quietly, 'Well there she is, Captain. The old Hyperion.'

As the little gig pulled steadily over the blue water Bolitho concentrated his full attention on the anchored Hyperion. Allday had perhaps made his comment without thought, yet his words seemed to jar another chord in Bolitho's mind as if to rule out this further meeting as mere coincidence.

Hyperion was an old ship, for it was twenty-one years since her keel had first tasted salt water, and Bolitho's rational mind told him that it was inevitable he should see her from time to time as his service carried him from one part of the world to the next. Yet whenever his mind and body had been tried to the limit it now seemed as if this old ship of the line had somehow been close by. At the bloody battles of the Chesapeake, and again at the Saintes, when his own beloved frigate had almost been pounded into submission, he had seen her blunt bows thrusting through the thickest of the smoke, her sides flashing with gunfire and sails pockmarked with holes as she fought to hold her place in the line.

He narrowed his grey eyes as the sunlight lanced up from the water and threw a pattern of dancing reflections across the ship's tall side. He knew that she had been in steady commission now for over three years and had returned home from the West Indies with high hopes for a quick pay-off and welLearned rest both for herself and her company.