Sourly he watched Tregembo fuss over the hot water and the glim, whose light was transferred to a lantern and the lashed candelabra, illuminating the cabin with a cheerlessness that revealed the tumbled state of its contents.

'You'll catch your death, zur, sitting like that…' 'Don't fuss, Tregembo,' replied Drinkwater, mellowing and seeing in the seams and scars of the old man's highlit face the harrowing of age and service. He opened his mouth to apologise but Tregembo forestalled him.

'The fever's no better, zur, if I'm a judge o' temper.' Drinkwater stood with the sweat dry on him and drew his nightshirt over his head. He grunted and took the soap from Tregembo's outstretched hand.

'I'll get Mr Lallo to make up some James's Powders, zur…' 'You'll do no such damned thing, Tregembo…' 'Dover's Powders then, zur, they be a powerful sudorific…' 'Damn James and Dover… fresh air will cure me, fresh air and hot coffee, be off and find me some hot coffee instead of standing over me like a poxed nursemaid…'

'There be fresh air a-plenty this morning, zur,' muttered Tregembo as he left the cabin and the remark brought the ghost of a smile to Drinkwater's haggard face, even as it reminded him of his greatest problem, his crew.

Over four years earlier, in the spring of 1803 and the brief period of peace, he had taken command of the sloop Melusine. She had been manned by picked volunteers, men who chose to stay at sea in the Royal Navy, rather than chance their luck in the uncertain world ashore. Many of them had been aboard ship for long before that. The resumption of war had carried them to the Arctic aboard Melusine, and to the Atlantic and Baltic in the frigate Antigone, into which ship they had been turned over when Drinkwater reached post-rank. Now the process of transfer had been repeated and that core of volunteers still lingered at the heart of Patrician's company.