'I had the honour to serve under him during the Camperdown campaign.' But Drinkwater was thinking he knew something else about Miss Onslow, something more keenly concerning herself, but he could not recollect it and a minute or two later the carriage turned off Piccadilly and drew to a halt in Albemarle Street.

After handing the young lady down he refused her invitation to reacquaint himself with the admiral.

'I regret I have pressing matters to attend to, Miss Onslow. It is enough that I have been of service to you.' He bent over her hand.

'I shall not forget it, Mr Drinkwater.'

Drinkwater forgot the encounter in the next few days. He became immersed in the countless details of preparing his ship for sea. He visited the Navy Board again, bribed clerks in the Victualling Office, wrote to the Regulating Captain in charge of the Impress Service at Chatham. He accrued a collection of books and ledgers; Muster books, Sick and Hurt books, Account books, Order books, orders directives. He had many masters; the Admiralty, the Navy Board, the Victualling Board, Greenwich hospital, even the Master-General of the Ordnance at Woolwich. Towards the end of November, he paid his reckoning, complaining about the exhorbi-tant charge for the candles he had burned in their Lordships' service. In company with a sprightlier Lieutenant Rogers he caught the Dover stage from the George at Southwark at four in the morning and set out for Chatham.

As the stage crossed the bridge at Rochester and he glimpsed the steel-grey Medway, cold beneath a lowering sky, he recalled the contents of a letter sent to his lodgings by Lord Dungarth. The earl had concluded… I realise, my dear Nathaniel, that she is not what you supposed would be in my power to obtain for you, nevertheless the particular nature of the service upon which you are to be employed would lend itself more readily to your purpose of advancement were you in a bomb. Virago is a bomb in fact, though not in name. I leave it to your ingenuity to alter the matter…