Frey crossed the deck to check the course at the binnacle then returned to Drinkwater's side.

'She's holding sou'west three-quarters west, sir, and I think another haul on the fore and main tacks will give us a further quarter point to the westward.'

'Very well, Mr Frey, see to it.'

Drinkwater left to Frey the mustering of the watch to hitch another fathom in the lee braces and haul down the leading tacks of the huge fore and mainsails. He looked over the ship and saw, despite eight months in dockyard hands, the ravages of time and long service. His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician was a cut-down sixty-four-gun ship, a class considered too weak to stand in the line of battle. Instead, she had been razeed, deprived of a deck, and turned into a heavy frigate.

A powerful cruiser when first modified, she had since completed an arduous circumnavigation under Drinkwater's command. During this voyage she had doubled Cape Horn to the westward, fought a Russian seventy-four to a standstill and survived a typhoon in the China Seas. A winter spent in home waters under another post-captain had further tested her when she had grounded in the Baie de la Seine. Refloated with some difficulty she had subsequently languished in dock at Plymouth until recommissioned for special service. Her prime qualification for this selection was her newly coppered bottom which, it was thought, would give her the fast passages Government desired.

'Well, we shall see,' Drinkwater thought, watching the sunlight break through the cloud bank astern and suddenly transform the scene with its radiance, for nothing could mar the beauty of the morning.

The grey waves sparkled, a rainbow danced in the shower of spray streaming away from the lee bow, the wave-crests shone with white and fleeting brilliance, and the details of the deck, the breeched guns, the racks of round shot, the halliards and clewlines coiled on the fife-rails, the standing rigging, all stood out with peculiar clarity, throwing their shadows across the planking.