"Hoist, and haul away!" Mr. Winwood roared as the din died off. "Note carefully the time, Mister Grace," he told his assisting middle, to whom he had already loaned his large pocket watch.

Long minutes, it took, to winch up the length of sodden manila line, for the pair of sailors on the main-chain platform to guide the line, and the heavy plummet, to the surface, then up the ship's flanks and tumblehome to the entry-port, where Mr. Winwood, Mr. Pendarves, and Mr. Towpenny knelt down, and looked at the muck caught in the tallow in its hollow bottom.

In-Soundings of somewhere, Lewrie thought as he finished off a last cool sip of black coffee. He drifted forward to the binnacle to join his officers, who were already intently poring over the sea-chart pinned to the traverse board, tracing mittened fingers over the "iffy" contours of the 120-fathom line. Which line bespoke an host of possibilities, from Danish Iceland to French Ushant.

Somewhere there are law courts, bailiffs, accusin' letters… court-martials and nooses! Lewrie quietly despaired. And it had been such a promising career he'd had, too, twenty bloody years of his life "press-ganged" into the Navy with nothing better open to a gentleman of his station… well, there always had been Pimp and Captain Sharp, and gaggles of the gullible to fleece, but nothing quiet so certain… so boresomely certain, as the life of a King's Commission Sea-Officer. Dammit!

Aye, though, he felt like groaning aloud; make one little mistake, try t'do just one good turn, an 'see where it gets you! And, it was in the cause of keepin' this ship manned an' efficient, too! Ye'd think that'd earn a man a pat on the back, or someth…!

"Ah, hmm," the Sailing Master announced, after a long, furrowed-brow study, and a peer at his sea-charts once he'd attained the quarterdeck without Lewrie noticing. "A blue-grey ooze, sirs, a clay-ey muck, at that, I am bound. Stap me if I do not believe we're within twenty leagues of Cape Clear, on Ireland. Sixty or so sea-miles Sou'west of Cape Clear, to be more exact, ah ha."