'No good'll come of it… 'tis bad luck…'

The mutter was drowned by the crash of the marines' boots as Mount dismissed his guard and reposted his sentries. Frey was bending over the swooning midshipman. Mr Belchambers was not yet thirteen years of age and his name was sonorously inappropriate for so small and insubstantial a figure. It was odd, Drinkwater thought, that men like Stanham had to be hanged while there seemed no lack of foolish boys to come and play at being men.

'We shall get under weigh the instant the wind eases, Mr Fraser,' Drinkwater growled as he turned below. 'I received my orders by the same despatch-boat as brought this…'

He held up the crumpled piece of paper.

'Very well, sir… and him, sir?' Fraser's eyes jerked aloft.

'Leave him for an hour… but no more, Mr Fraser, no more, I pray you.'

Above their heads Stanham's body turned slowly in the wind. Dark stains spread across his clothing and it was subject to the most humiliating ignominy of all; his cuckolded member was engorged with his stilled blood.

  Chapter One 

Cape Horn

December 1807

Drinkwater lay soaked in sweat, aware that it was neither the jerking of his cot, nor the violent motion of Patrician that had woken him, but something fading beyond his recall, the substance of his nightmare. Wiping his forehead and at the same time shivering in the pre-dawn chill, he lay back and tugged the shed blankets back over his aching body. The quinsy that had presaged his fever was worse this morning, but the terrors of the nightmare far exceeded the disturbances of illness. He stared into the darkness, trying to remember what had so upset him, driven by some instinct to revive the images of the nightmare.

And then with the unpredictability of imagination, they flooded back.