He was three inches shy of six feet tall, trim and lean. Hair of middle, almost light, brown, crowned his head, and fell in a short queue at the back of his collar, bound with a bow of black satin,and the hair was not drawn back severely, but allowed to curl slightly and naturally at his temples, over his ears, like the bust of a Roman or Greek warrior. The face was tanned much darker than most fashionable young gentlemen would care to display, providing a background for eyes that would occasionally crinkle in delightful greetings to young farm-girls, eyes that were sometimes gray, sometimes blue. And upon one cheek, there was a slight white pucker of a scar, which gave him the dashing, rakehell air of past, and present, danger. Soldier, or sailor, most judged him. A young man who held the King's Commission from his clothing, and the way he bore himself, from his fine manners when he lifted his military-cut hat in greeting, from the effortless way he rode as if born to a house of means, with stables and the license of the hunt which did not come to the son of a crofter or tenant.

Lt. Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, was feeling pleased as punch with himself, and with life in general, at that moment. The spirited roan gelding he rode was a sound mount, and there was nothing better to his way of thinking than to be in the saddle in the middle of a spring morning. Had his father not practically press-ganged him into the Sea Service, he might have considered a career (a short one until he inherited, he reminded himself) in a cavalry regiment What else was there for a younger son that befitted one raised the way he had been! Trade? A clerking job? Certainly not the clergy, he shuddered!

Much as he had at first despised the life he had discovered in the Fleet (and still looked upon with a chary eye as one of continual deprivation and bleakness), he had in his luggage orders that would put him in command of a ship of war, would transport him a quarter of the way around the world to the Bahamas and the West Indies, for three years of steady pay, at five shillings per diem, to augment his prize money, his "French" guineas, and his Mindanao pirate's booty, all now safely ensconced in London at Coutts Co., bankers and each drawing a tidy sum of its own per annum.