"Commissioned officers in His Majesty's Navy, including a Flag-Officer, sympathising with, if not actually condoning, a lower-deck mutiny!"

He's overstating it, Vallery thought dully. He's provoking us. The words, the tone, were a question, a challenge inviting reply.

There was no reply. The four men seemed apathetic, indifferent. Four men, each an individual, each secure in his own personality, yet, at that moment, so strangely alike, their faces heavy and still and deeply lined, their eyes so quiet, so tired, so very old.

"You are not convinced, gentlemen?" he went on softly. "You find my choice of words a trifle-ah-disagreeable?" He leaned back. "Hm...'mutiny.'" He savoured the word slowly, compressed his lips, looked round the table again. "No, it doesn't sound too good, does it, gentlemen?

You would call it something else again, perhaps?" He shook his head, bent forward, smoothed out a signal sheet below his ringers.

"'Returned from strike on Lofotens,'" he read out: "'1545, boom passed: 1610, finished with engines: 1630 -provisions, stores lighters alongside, mixed seaman-stoker party detailed unload lubricating drums: 1650, reported to Captain stokers refused to obey C.P.O. Hartley, then successively Chief Stoker Hendry, Lieutenant (E.) Grierson and Commander (E.): ringleaders apparently Stokers Riley and Petersen: 1705, refused to obey Captain: 1715, Master at Arms and Regulating P.O. assaulted in performance of duties.'" He looked up. "What duties? Trying to arrest the ringleaders?"

Vallery nodded silently.

"'1715, seaman branch stopped work, apparently in sympathy: no violence offered: 1725, broadcast by Captain, warned of consequences: ordered to return to work: order disobeyed: 1730, signal to C.-in-C. Duke of Cumberland, for assistance.'"