It was a Banyan Day, without any salt-meat issue, and after a miserable two months on blockade, a paltry and dull breakfast it was. There was oatmeal porridge, boiled up in water, not milk, and livened with a daub of rancid butter and a largish dollop of strawberry preserves. There was a slab of cheese from his own stores, not that crumbling, dry-as-sawdust Navy issue so beloved of the Victualling Board, but even that was beginning to go over, though showed no signs of red worms yet. And there was ship's biscuit. Lewrie had purchased extra-fine for himself, but it was tough going, even after being soaked in water for the better part of an hour before being served, and, did he wish to keep his remaining teeth, he'd chew it hellish-careful. There was coffee, at least, with sugar grated off a cone from his locking caddy, and sweet goat's milk from the nanny up forrud in the manger.

Lewrie turned his eyes towards the cats' dish at the far end of his table, where a reassured Toulon and a cocky Chalky were having their own porridge, laced with cut-up sausages and jerkied beef, and felt a trifle envious!

With his second piping-hot cup of coffee, Lewrie considered one more biscuit, and peered into the bread barge… just in time to see the weevils crawling out of the last piece. No thankee! he thought.

"I'll be on deck, Pettus," Lewrie said, shoving back from his plate and rising. "Shove me into my boat-cloak, and I'm off."

"Captain's on deck!" Midshipman Tillyard announced to one and all as Lewrie trotted up the larboard gangway ladder from the waist. "Morning, sir," Tillyard added, with a hand to his hat.

"And a dull'un, Mister Tillyard," Lewrie replied, his own right hand touching the front of his cocked hat. "Good morning to you, Mister Farley. Anything of interest to report?"

"Good morning, Captain. No, nothing of interest so far, sorry to say," the First Officer told him. Lewrie began to pace the windward side of the quarterdeck, with Farley in-board of him. "The mast-head lookouts have reported seeing some of those canal barges under sail behind the dikes, every now and then, but I can't imagine a way to get at them, not through those shoals, yonder."