Frey might have lightened the mood with his familiarity, but Frey had the deck and Drinkwater had not invited any representatives from the gunroom. He would break his fast with the midshipmen tomorrow morning. For the nonce it was his officers with whom he wished to become better acquainted and their present quiescence was vaguely worrying. Did he intimidate them?

It had come upon him, on recent mornings as he shaved, that he was ageing. He had no idea why this sudden realization of the obvious had struck him so forcibly. Perhaps it was the return to the cares and concerns of command after months of indolence, perhaps no more than the half-light that threw his face into stark relief as he peered at his image in the mirror. Whatever the cause, he had had a glimpse of himself as others saw him. Did that grim visage with its scarred cheek and the powder burns tattooed into one eyelid intimidate?

In repose he wondered what expression he habitually wore. Elizabeth had told him that his face brightened when he smiled. Did he not smile enough? Did he wear a perpetual scowl upon the quarterdeck?

He looked down the twin lines of officers, bending over their soup, concentrating on their manners lest it slop into their white-breeched laps. At the far end of the table Metcalfe laid his soup-spoon in his plate and Mullender loomed up at his shoulder. Others followed suit, the chink of silver upon china the only sound in the cabin, if one set aside the wracking groans of the frigate's fabric, the low grind of the rudder and the surge and hiss of the sea beneath the windows.

The handsome Gordon and the thin-faced chaplain, Simpson, the ruddy Wyatt, the elegant Moncrieff, the purser and the surgeon remained disappointingly unanimated.

'Well, gentlemen,' Drinkwater said, laying down his own soup-spoon, 'what is your judgement of the temper of the men following our exercise at the guns this morning?'