Bolitho felt suddenly ravenous, but knew the wardroom fare would be little better when he was relieved to snatch his share of it.

He thought of his mother and the great grey house in Falmouth. He walked away from Couzens, his watchful midshipman, who rarely took his eyes off him. How terrible the blow had been. In the Navy you could risk death a dozen ways in any day. Disease, shipwreck or the cannon's roar, the walls of Falmouth church were covered with memorial plaques. The names and deeds of sea-officers, sons of Falmouth who had left port never to return.

But his mother. Surely not her. Always youthful and vivacious. Ready to stand-in and shoulder the responsibility of house and land when her husband, Captain James Bolitho, was away, which was often.

Bolitho and his brother, Hugh, his two sisters, Felicity and Nancy, had all loved her in their own different and special ways. When he had returned home from the Destiny, still shocked and suffering from his wound, he had needed her more than ever. The house had been like a tomb. She was dead. It was impossible to accept even now that she was not back in Falmouth, watching the sea beyond Pendennis Castle, laughing in the manner which was infectious enough to drive all despair aside.

A chill, they had said. Then a sudden fever. It had been over in a matter of weeks.

He could picture his father at this very moment. Captain James, as he was locally known, was well respected. as a magistrate since losing his arm and being removed from active duty. The house in winter, the lanes clogged with mud, the news always late, the countryside too worried by pressures of cold and wet, of lost animals and marauding foxes to heed much for this far-off war. But his father would care. Brooding as a ship-ofwar anchored or weighed in Carrick Roads. Needing, pining for the life which had rejected him, and now completely alone. It must be a million times worse for him, Bolitho thought sadly.