Above the deck the sails stirred restlessly and shone in the mist like oiled silk. Like everything else they were dripping with moisture, and hardly moved by the sluggish breeze from across the larboard quarter.

Falmouth. Perhaps that was the answer to his uncertainty and apprehension. For eighteen months they had been employed on blockade and later the watch over the southern approaches of Ireland. A French attempt to invade Ireland and start an uprising had been expected weekly, yet when it had come just five months ago the British blockade had been caught unready. The invasion attempt had failed more because of bad weather and the French fleet being scattered than any real pressure from the overworked patrols.

Feet clattered in the passageway beneath the poop and he knew it was the admiral’s servant going to attend his master in the great cabin.

It was strange how after all that had gone before they were coming here, to Falmouth, Bolitho’s home. It was as if fate had overrun everything which both duty and the Admiralty could muster.

“… an’ a quarter less seven!” The leadsman’s call was like a chant.

Bolitho began to pace slowly up and down the weather side, his chin lowered into his neckcloth.

Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Thelwall, whose flag flapped so limply from the masthead, had been aboard for over a year. Even when he had first hoisted his flag he had been a sick man. Old for his rank, and weighed down with the responsibility of an overworked squadron, his health had deteriorated rapidly in the fog and piercing cold of the last winter months. As his flag captain Bolitho had done what he could to ease the pressures on the tired,

wizened little admiral, and it had been painful to watch as day by day he fought to overcome the illness which was destroying him.

At last the ship was returning to England to replenish stores and make good other shortages. Sir Charles Thelwall had already despatched a sloop with his reports and needs, and also made known the state of his own illness.