Lady Catherine Somervell had been there with them. So beautiful, so alone despite the crowds. Where was she now? What would become of her? The woman who had defied society and had been Sir Richard's lover and inspiration, and had won the heart of the country.

The deck moved slightly, and he saw the ship in his thoughts as clearly as he had this morning. A thoroughbred. Like the carved inscription beneath her figurehead. Second to None.

Unrivalled was eager to move. The first and perhaps the last of her kind: in the yard where she had been laid down, built and launched, Galbraith had seen her only sister ship. The same fine lines, the pride of any craftsman. But abandoned. Unfinished. Dead.

lie stared along the deck, at the two lines of eighteenpounders, their tackles and hreechings taut and neat, and recalled Massie, who had been the next senior in the wardroom. A flag officer's son and a gunnery man to his fingertips, not one you would ever know. Quiet and self-contained even on the day he had been killed, shot down as he had rallied his people.

He had been replaced here in Plymouth by Lieutenant George Varlo, a complete contrast. Lively, talkative, and in his mid-twenties, he must have had some influence; every appointment now was like pure gold. Galbraith had decided that he would hide his time with Varlo. I le almost smiled. Maybe he had got that from the captain.

He turned in his pacing as the noon gun echoed mournfully across the water and the watching veterans. Even without the large, old-fashioned watch he had always carried, Captain Bolitho would be right on time.

He heard Midshipman Sandell's sharp, petulant voice, berating one of the new men. They were over fifty hands short of approved complement. Petty tyrants like Sandell would be no loss at all.

"Gig's in sight!" That was Bellairs, the third lieutenant, who had been the senior midshipman when Unrivalled had commissioned. It would be a challenge to him, Galbraith thought. Some of the old Jacks would recall him as just another "young gentleman," neither fish nor fowl, and still look for some weakness to exploit. But he was a popular choice and had settled into the wardroom well, and seemed grateful for his change of circumstance.