"We were about four miles to windward of 'em when Duncan gave a signal to bear down and engage 'em. We repeated the signal, then bore off Easterly, with a touch of Southing, to pin the Dutch against their own coast, as it trends Northerly…"

"Translator!" an idle stroller who had come to observe over the others' shoulders cried.

"This way." Lewrie grinned, employing a nutcracker for use as a wind-pointer. "With the wind large on our larboard quarters. Admiral Duncan hoisted orders as we. neared them; first, to pass through their line and engage from leeward, meaning to break their line apart with a pair of hammer-blows 'gainst their centre and rear. It was cloudy and hazy, so how many ships got that signal, I can't say. After that, he flew 'Close Action.' I really do think, did he have to go aground and fight them on dry land, he'd have done so. Admiral Duncan is a terror, sirs… a right terror."

Duncan, that giant with the full, unruly mane of snow-white hair on his head, that tall, athletic form that towered over six-feet-four, of the massive calves that made the ladies swoon when he donned silk stockings… as hardy and strong as a Scots ghillie who had coursed the Highlands like an elkhound since childhood!

" 'Twas said of him that during the recent naval mutiny at the Nore, and his own harbour of Great Yarmouth, Duncan had seized one of the ringleaders by the scruff of the neck, held him out arm horizontal, dangling a full-grown man over the side of his flagship 'til the canting bastard squealed for mercy!" Lewrie related.

A man of great anger, too, who'd prefer the ancient punishment for blasphemy of searing the malefactor's tongue with a hot iron, was he able to get away with it; a man who wore an odd double ring on his left hand encircling little finger and ring finger so he still had use of that hand. He'd broken it and turned those fingers numb by smashing the skull of a rioter in a street melee in Edinborough in 1792-the churl had insulted the King, raising Duncan 's Old Testament wrath!