Bolitho looked aloft at the black criss-cross of shrouds and rigging, the tightly furled sails, and shortened figures busily working high above the decks to make certain all was secure there too.

Some of the lieutenants moved away as he walked to the quarterdeck to look down at the lines of eighteen-pounders which had replaced the original batteries of twelve-pounders.

Faces floated through the busy figures. Like ghosts. Noises intruded above the shouted orders and the clatter of tackles. Decks torn by shot as if ripped by giant claws. Men falling and dying, reaching for aid when there was none. His nephew Adam, then fourteen years old, white-faced and yet wildly determined as the embattled ships had ground together for the last embrace from which there was no escape for either of them.

Haven said, 'The guardboat is alongside, sir.'

Bolitho gestured past him. 'You have not rigged winds'ls, Captain.'

Why could he not bring himself to call Haven by his first name? What is happening to me?

Haven shrugged. 'They are unsightly from the shore, sir.'

Bolitho looked at him. 'They give some air to the people on the gundecks. Have them rigged.'

He tried to contain his annoyance, at himself, and with Haven for not thinking of the furnace heat on an overcrowded gundeck. Hyperion was one hundred and eighty feet long on her gundeck, and carried a total company of some six hundred officers, seamen and marines. In this heat it would feel like twice that number.

He-saw Haven snapping his orders to his first lieutenant, the latter glancing towards him as if to see for himself the reason for the rigging of windsails.

The first lieutenant was another odd bird, Bolitho had decided. He was over thirty, old for his rank, and had been commander of a brig. The appointment had not been continued when the vessel had been paid off, and he had been returned to his old rank. He was tall, and unlike his captain, a man of outward excitement and enthusiasm. Tall and darkly handsome, his gipsy good looks reminded Bolitho of a face in the past, but he could not recall whose. He had a ready grin, and was obviously popular with his subordinates, the sort of officer the midshipmen would love to emulate.