A side door at the back of the courtroom opened. A court official emerged in robe and wig, with a large ornamental mace in his hand, which he loudly thudded on the floor, crying "Oyez, oyez, oyez!" to silence the packed crowd, and order them to take seats.

Free to do what? Lewrie wondered as the procession of officials emerged, as Lord Justice Oglethorpe in his voluminous black silk robes and large bag-wig strode out as grand as a royal.

Even were he acquitted, Lewrie just knew that Lord Spencer at Admiralty would never give him another warship. He'd be assigned to the Yellow Squadron, that unofficial dust-bin for fools, incompetents, lunaticks, and dodderers. He'd stay ashore on half-pay, might even rise to Rear-Admiral of the Red, should he outlive his contemporaries-but "beached," waiting for seniors to die.

Lewrie knew his shortcomings; they were legion. He could not pretend to be a gentleman farmer; he'd tried that 'tween the wars and had been a miserably confused failure. He was too old to take up some new career, too gullible to stand for a seat in Parliament, too idle and slug-a-bed, if given the chance, to seek merchant service. He was too poor to play the market at the 'Change (and most-like would waste his last farthing on speculative idiocy and ignorance), too much of a stiff-necked "gentleman" to stoop to anything that smacked of "Trade" and Commerce, no matter how lucrative (or risky) such turned out to be for other venturers. The prize-money he had reaped in the Med, in the West Indies, and South Atlantic was tied up in the Sinking Funds and Three Percents anyway, and sooner or later, the last of that'd come in, and there'd be nothing after.

Maybe Twigg needs a new cut-throat, he speculated as he took a seat at the Defence table, before the summons to the raised dock.