He made himself walk very slowly to the window and stood looking down at the harbour spread below him like some great painting. English Harbour. The headquarters and linchpin of England 's sea power in the Indies and Caribbean. Every type of ship seemed to be here. Stately two-deckers in the deep anchorages their awnings spread and every gun port open to catch the merest breath of air. Lithe frigates and supply vessels, and a whole collection of smaller craft from brigs to schooners, between which countless oared boats plied back and forth like water-beetles?

Somewhere in the building a man shouted loudly and feet clattered in a passageway. Bolitho tore his eyes from the anchored ships and crossed to a wall mirror, his mind suddenly very aware of what the next minutes might bring or take away?

He still could not get used to his change of appearance. He had never imagined that a uniform would alter a man's outward image so much yet leave him inwardly the same. Just weeks ago he had been second lieutenant in the Trojan, an eighty-gun ship-ofthe-line. For three years he had lived, worked and nearly died within her crowded hull, rising from his original position of fourth lieutenant by way of one man's death and the promotion of another. He had become used to the Trojan, even though he had had to fight off the yearning to free himself from her ponderous authority to find more individual scope for his ideas?

Like everyone aboard he had been kept busy enough. With the rebellion in America every ship-of-war was needed as never before. As the rebellion grew and spread and some real hint of its purpose filtered through to the fleet the Trojan was called from one crisis to another?

It seemed incredible that disorganised bands ob men could be welded into armies.