There was one picture on this otherwise bare wall. A twodecker, firing a salute or at an unseen enemy. Old, and probably Dutch. His mind was clinging to the inconsequential detail. Holding on.

All those faces, names. Not even a full year since Athena had hoisted Bethune's vice-admiral's flag. And I became his flag captain. And now she was paid off, like all those other unwanted ships. Their work, and sometimes their sacrifice, would soon be forgotten.

He recalled the longer waiting room he had seen briefly in passing. So like those redundant ships that seemed to line the harbours or any available creek: a final resting place.

Officers, a few in uniform, waiting to see some one in authority. Need, desperation, a last chance to plead for a ship.

Any ship. Their only dread to be discarded, cast from the life they knew, and ending on the beach. A warning to all of them.

There were nine hundred captains on the Navy List, and not an admiral under sixty years of age.

Adam turned abruptly and saw his own reflection in the window. He was thirty-eight years old, or would be in four months.

What will you do? He realized that he had thrust one hand into his coat, the pocket where he carried her letters. The link, the need. And she was in Cornwall. Unless… He jerked his hand from his coat.

"If you would follow me, Captain Bolitho?"

He snatched up his hat from the table with its unread newspaper. He had not even heard the door open.

The porter peered around the room as if it were a habit.

Looking for what? He must have seen it all. The great victories and the defeats. The heroes and the failures.

He touched the old sword at his hip. Part of the Bolitho legend. He could almost hear his aunt reminding him of it when they had been looking at his portrait; he had been painted with a yellow rose pinned to his uniform coat. Lowenna's rose.