Lewrie paused from choosing, taking a long look seaward. It was such a clear and sunny day that he could even see far up-channel into the main anchorage of Spithead, past Gilkicker Point into the little-used and shallow channel of Needles Passage round the west end of the Isle of Wight. Redcoats standing sentry-go on the ramparts of the Monckton Fort could be spotted individually. To the east, he could even make out the heights of Selsey Bill, for a rare wonder.

And there was his brand-new frigate, HMS Savage, anchored not five cables offshore, and as shiny as a new-minted penny, just fresh from the graving docks.

Her new hull paint, tar, and pitch shone in the morning light, every glitter of sunshine on the cat's-pawed harbour waters reflected down her sleek flanks like a continual shower of diamond chips. She floated light and high, less her guns and stores, which still sat ashore in warehouses and armouries at Gun Wharf, or among the goods from the Victualling Board's vast depot, and fresh copper cladding, normally below the waterline, flickered with dapples of sun like a horizontal sheet of gold or brass.

She was a Fifth Rate 18-pounder of over 950 tons burthen, the largest, longest, best-armed ship Lewrie had ever been appointed to command, and the thought of losing captaincy over her was as painful as the dread of dying. She was long, lean, and powerful-looking with such a sweet, aggressive curve to her sheerline and gunwale, with an entry and forefoot finer and leaner than the usual bluff bowed ships built in British yards. She was a leashed greyhound! A French greyhound, Lewrie had to remind himself; even so, though…

The French had built her at Brest, of stout Hamburg oak before the outbreak of the war in 1792, and commissioned in the vicious and bloody turmoil of the Terror in '93, named in honour of the crackpot ideas of the philosopher Rousseau as Le Sauvage Noble.