Seven years o f war. He turned the thought over in his mind.

Victories and defeats, good ships left to rot until the enemy were almost at the gates, brave men and fools, mutinies and triumphs. Beauchamp had seen it all, had watched new leaders emerging to replace the failures and the tyrants. Collingwood and Troubridge, Hardy and Saumarez, and, of course, the public's darling, Horatio Nelson.

Beauchamp gave a thin smile. Nelson was what the country needed, the very stuff of victory. But he could not see the hero of the Nile enduring the work of Admiralty like himself. Sitting at endless policy meetings, smoothing the fears of King and Parliament, guiding those less eager towards positive action. No, he decided, Nelson would not last a month in Whitehall, any more than he would in a flagship. Beauchamp was over sixty and looked it. He sometimes felt older than time itself.

There was a discreet tap on the door and his secretary peered warily in at him.

'Are you ready, Sir George?'

'Yes.' It sounded like o f course. 'Ask him to come up.'

Beauchamp never stopped working. But he enjoyed seeing his plans come to fruition, his choices for leadership and command rising to his severe standards.

Like his visitor, for instance. Beauchamp looked at the polished doors, the sunlight reflecting on a decanter of claret and two finely cut glasses.

Richard Bolitho, stubborn about some things, unorthodox in others, was one of Beauchamp's rewards. Just three years ago he had appointed him commodore over a handful of ships and sent him into the Mediterranean to seek out and discover the French intentions. He had been a good choice. The rest was history; Bolitho's swift actions and the later arrival of Nelson with a full fleet at his disposal to smash the French squadrons into defeat at the Battle of the Nile. Bonaparte's hopes for a total conquest of Egypt and India had been destroyed.