Bolitho's mother threw up her hands. `No sooner back and you want to go looking at ships again! Just like your father!'

The air was keen-edged, like ice, but by the time they had walked through the town to the harbour they were glowing like stoves. Good food, with regular sleep and exercise, had worked wonders for both of them.

Together they stood on the jetty and watched the slow-moving vessel tacking towards her anchorage. She was some seventy feet in length, with a massive beam of over twenty. Single-masted, and with a rounded, blunt bow, she looked cumbersome and heavy, but Bolitho knew from what he had seen elsewhere that properly handled cutters could use their great sail area to tack within five points of the wind and in most weathers. She. carried a vast, loosefooted mainsail, and also a squared topsail. A jib and fore completed her display of canvas, although Bolitho knew she could set more, even studding sails if required.

She was now turning lazily into the wind, her canvas vanishing deftly as her hands prepared to drop anchor. A red ensign and masthead pendant made the only colour against the pewter sky, and Bolitho felt the same old feeling he always did when seeing a part, even a small part, of his own world.

Blunt and clumsy she might appear, lacking the glinting broadsides and proud figureheads of larger men-of-war, she was nevertheless somebody's own command.

He saw the anchor splash down, the usual bustle at the tackles to sway the jolly boat up and over the bulwark.

Across the choppy water they both heard the twitter of calls, and pictured the scene on board. In that seventy feet of hull they carried a company of nearly sixty souls, although how they managed to sleep, eat and wdrk in such cramped space was hard to fathom. They shared the hull with anchor cables, water, provisions, powder and shot. It left few inches for comfort.

The jolly boat was in the water now, and Bolitho saw the gleam of white breeches beneath a blue coat as the vessel's commander climbed down to be pulled ashore.