'Very well,' he said, dismissing Belchambers, 'I'll be up directly.'

From the doorway, as he drew on his coat, Frey regarded his colleagues in their post-prandial disorder.

Despite the bull's eyes, the skylight shaft and the yellow glow of the table candelabra, the wardroom was as ill-lit as it was stuffy. At the head of the long table, leaning back against the rudder trunking, Mr Metcalfe remained inscrutable behind his newspaper. Mr Moncrieff, the marine officer, was slumped in his chair, his pomaded head thrown back, his mouth open and his eyes shut in an uncharacteristically inelegant posture.

Ignoring the midshipman's intrusion, the master, his clay pipe adding to the foul air, continued playing cards with the surgeon. He laid a card with a snap and scooped the trick.

'Trumps, by God,' grumbled Mr Pym, staring down at his own meagre hand.

Wyatt, the master, grinned diabolically through wreaths of puffed smoke.

Frey looked in vain for Mr Gordon, but the second lieutenant had retired to his cabin and only Wagstaff, the mess-servant, reacted to Frey's exasperated surveillance, pausing expectantly in his slovenly shuffling as though awaiting rebuke or instruction. Frey noticed that there was little to choose between his filthy apron and the stained drapery which adorned the table. With an expression of mild disgust Mr Frey abandoned this scene of genteel squalor with something like relief, and retreated to the deck, acknowledging the perfunctory salutes of the marine sentries en route.

Emerging into the fresh air he cast a quick look about him. His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician lay at anchor in Cawsand Bay. The high blue arch of the sky was gradually darkening in the east behind the jagged, listing outline of the Mewstone. The last rays of the setting sun fanned out over the high land behind Cawsand village. Already the stone houses and the fish-drying sheds were indistinct as the shadow of the land crept out across the water. The still depths of the bay turned a mysterious green, disturbed only by the occasional plop of a jumping mullet and a low swell which rolled round Penlee Point, forming an eddy about the Draystone.