And yet so different…

Even the regular thump of the pumps, which had not stopped since the first crash of cannon fire, had been stilled.

And Bethune, their vice-admiral, had stood facing the infamous Lord Sillitoe. A victim or a culprit; it remained undecided, and somehow unimportant at that time and place Jago had later seen recorded in the master's log. The date and their position in the Caribbean when Catherine, Lady Somervell, was buried at sea.

He remembered Adam Bolitho's face when the grating had been raised, and they had heard the splash alongside. Sailors often thought about it, even joked about it on the messdeck.

Not this time.

At Antigua there had been new orders waiting. Sillitoe, a friend of the Prince Regent, it was said, had been handed over into the custody of the commodore there, who had been promoted to rear-admiral while Athena and her consorts had been under fire.

Jago had kept close to his captain throughout the remainder of the campaign; if you could call it that, he thought darkly.

Pulling his company together again, visiting the wounded, and often at odds with Bethune. The latter shouting and thumping the table and drinking beyond his capacity and his normal caution. Some said Bethune had been in love with Catherine Somervell. But Jago knew that she had loved only one man, Sir Richard Bolitho, who had been killed on the deck of his flagship following Napoleon's escape from Elba. Jago had seen her in the old church at Falmouth, when all the flags had been at half-mast, and Unrivalledhad fired a salute. It had been Richard's name she had been calling when she had fallen dead.

More like a greeting than a farewell, or so it seemed, looking back…

Somewhere a clock chimed. Two horsemen were trotting unhurriedly past the house. Dragoons, by their cut, he thought.