Haven had obviously thought it odd, eccentric perhaps, that his admiral should wish to see anything beyond his cabin or the poop, let alone show interest in the gundecks and orlop.

Bolitho's glance rested on the sword rack beside the screen. His own old sword, and the fine presentation one. How could Haven have understood? It was not his fault. Bolitho had taken his apparent dissatisfaction with his command like a personal insult. He had snapped, 'This ship may be old, Captain Haven, but she has out-sailed many far younger! The Chesapeake, the Saintes, Toulon and Biscay – her battle honours read like a history of the navy itself!' It was unfair, but Haven should have known better.

Every yard of that tour had been a rebirth of memory. Only the faces and voices did not fit. But the ship was the same. New masts, and most of her armament replaced by heavier artillery than when she had faced the broadsides of Lequiller's Tornade, gleaming paint and neatly tarred seams; nothing could disguise his Hyperion. He stared round the cabin, seeing it as before. And she was thirty-two years old. When she had been built at Dept-ford she had had the pick of Kentish oak. Those days of shipbuilding were gone forever, and now most forests had been stripped of their best timber to feed the needs of the fleet.

It was ironic that the great Tornade had been a new ship, yet she had been paid off as a prison-hulk some four years back. He felt his left eye again and cursed wretchedly as the mist seemed to drift across it. He thought of Haven and the others who served this old ship day and night. Did they know or guess that the man whose flag flew from the foremast truck was partially blind in his left eye? Bolitho clenched his fists as he relived that moment, falling to the deck, blinded by sand from the bucket an enemy ball had blasted apart.

He waited for his composure to return. No, Haven did not seem to notice anything beyond his duties.