He shaded his eyes and stared across at the anchored frigate. His ship, his home for just over two years. He should be used to it. There had been other days like this one.

He had listened to it all the way from Gibraltar. Hard men and young hopefuls alike, going home, getting the prize money and slave bounty they knew was their due. In the navy it was always dangerous to hope too much, or take things for granted. When they had left Plymouth eight months back, he had seen all the laid-up ships, the hulks, once the pride of a great fleet. When Unrivalled had anchored yesterday they had still been here.

He heard the boy Napier moving restlessly on the pile of baggage they had brought ashore less than an hour ago. His portly, round-shouldered companion was Daniel Yovell, who had volunteered to join the ship as captain's clerk when he had heard that the previous one had died. Or soY ovell had claimed. Jago knew differently now. Yovell had been clerk to Sir Richard Bolitho, then secretary aboard his flagship. And his friend, an unlikely one to find in a man-of-war. Stooped, gentle and devout, he had been given his own cottage next to the old Bolitho house in Falmouth where he had helped in estate matters, things Jago could not begin to guess at. But something had drawn Yovell back to the sea, and he had brought with him volunteers when Captain Adam had been short of trained hands. Men from Sir Richard's last ship, and some who had served him earlier during the wars. Jago kicked another pebble into the water. All those bloody enemies who were now supposed to be treated as allies.

And the boy, Napier, what must he be thinking, he wondered. Like many before him, he had been signed into the navy by his mother. She had remarried, and was now in America with her new husband, if that was what he was; Jago knew of plenty such cases. With the offspring safely signed on, the interest faded. Napier was devoted to the captain, and Bolitho never seemed too busy to explain things to him. Whatever the fools on the mess deck believed, there was nobody in a King's ship who was as lonely as her captain.