Even so, the men overside had to be changed every quarter-hour, or they'd be frozen stiff, and be hauled back in-board drenched to the skin, their hands numb and fish-belly white from guiding the lead-line and counting the knots as it was retrieved from the icy waters.

Think I can hear their teeth chatterin 'from here, Lewrie told himself as he took off his cocked hat, his battered second-best, with the gilt lace gone mouldy green, and tucked it under his left arm. He gave his scalp a good fingernail scrubbing, ran spread fingers through his thick, slightly curling mid-brown hair as a "Welsh comb," and took another look about.

Long-practiced, long-trained eyes swept over the sails, weather braces, and rigging, finding nothing amiss. The wind on his cheeks as he cocked his head left and right… steady, and the ship's head was in no danger of falling off to leeward of a sudden, for the two hands tending the large double-wheel helm were studiously alert, oblivious to anything outside their duties. Grey-blue eyes swept aloft, again; the commissioning pendant pointed aft and nearly East'rd, curling lazy, sinuous snake-crawls; the lookouts posted at the cross-trees of upper masts were keeping their eyes out-board on the horizon; on their feet, not slouching and would sing out if they had anything to report. But they didn't of course. This patch of the North Atlantic -and just which part of it they still had to discover-was yawningly empty of anything. Not a rock, not a wave-breaking shoal, not even a lone seabird that might have presaged their awaited landfall. Surprisingly, given the longitude they estimated their frigate had attained, there wasn't even a hint of another vessel's sail, either. As close as they supposed they'd come to the British Isles, there should have been dozens of merchantmen, fishing boats, by now. Unless, Capt. Alan Lewrie cynically imagined, they'd missed it altogether, and were somewhere to the West of Scandinavia, South of the Shetlands or Orkneys! For it was certainly cold enough for those climes.