Although he had been waiting for it, the knock at his cabin door made him start. An unnaturally expectant silence had fallen upon the ship following the noisy tumult of reaction to the pipes and calls for 'all hands'. Beyond the cabin windows the spring ebbtide and the westerly gale churned the yeasty water of the Great Nore and tore its surface into long streaks of dirty spume. Patrician snubbed her cable in the tideway, her fabric creaking and groaning to the interplay of the elements.

Somehow these noises, the working of the rudder stock in its trunking below him, the rattle of the window sashes, the whine of the wind seeking gaps in the closed gun-ports and the thrum of it aloft acting upon the great sounding box of the stilled hull, exploited the strange silence of her company and permeated the very air he breathed with a sinister foreboding.

Beyond the vibrating windows the shapes of the ships in company faded and reappeared in his field of view as squalls swept dismal curtains of rain across the anchorage. At least the weather prevented a close mustering of the squadron's boats about Patrician; she could do her dirty work in a measure of privacy.

The knock, simultaneously nervous and stridently impatient, came again.