Drinkwater had regretted his confidence the instant he had uttered it, for the shadow had passed over Frey too, and he had shivered, as if it had suddenly turned cold. 'Amen to that, sir.'

For a moment both men had thought of the cutter Kestrel, the action she had fought off Norway, and the death of Lieutenant James Quilhampton. It had been the abandonment of her battered hulk for which Frey, as senior surviving officer, had stood trial.

'Come,' Drinkwater had remarked encouragingly, 'let us not debar ourselves from some pleasure on this momentous occasion.'

'I think we have already survived the momentous occasions,' Frey said quietly, his eyes abstracted. 'This has an air of hollow triumph.'

Drinkwater had been moved by this perceptive remark, but his private emotions were cut short by Marlowe's sudden comment that a signal was being run up the Impregnable's flag halliards and Birkbeck the master had then hove alongside him, muttering presumptuously that it was the signal to weigh.

Now, in the late afternoon of 24 April, they were well within sight of Calais. To the southward the chalk lump of Cap Gris Nez jutted against the sky; closer the gentler, rounder and more pallid Cap Blanc Nez marked the point at which the French coast turned east, becoming flat and, apart from the church steeples and towers, featureless as it stretched away towards Dunquerque and the distant Netherlands. The little fishing village of Sangatte was almost abeam as the squadron breasted the first of the ebb tide and carried the breeze which had freshed during the day. An hour, an hour and a half at the most, would see them bringing up to their anchors in Calais Road.

Drinkwater examined the roadstead ahead of them, then lowered his glass; he looked once more at the irregular formation of the squadron. It was, as Marlowe had said, a pretty sight.