Bolitho and Allday exchanged glances.

It was the part Bolitho hated most. Having to wait. Not able to rush up and join the others and make his own judgement. Neale was the captain.

Voices sighed back and forth across the quarterdeck, but more subdued now. They were conscious either of Neale’s arrival on deck or of the fact that the cabin skylight was propped fully open.

Allday murmured, “God damn them, they are taking an age!”

In spite of his own anxiety, Bolitho was forced to smile.

“Easy, Allday. I will assist you if things become too difficult!”

But when a breathless midshipman arrived and blurted out his captain’s respects, and that a sail was closing to larboard, he found his admiral apparently at ease and untroubled on the stern bench and his coxswain engrossed in polishing a sword.

On the quarterdeck the sun was very hot, and made the shadows of rigging and shrouds criss-cross the pale planking like black bars.

Bolitho joined Neale by the hammock nettings. Like the other officers, he had discarded his heavy coat and was wearing shirt and breeches, with nothing to distinguish him from his subordinates. Anyone in Styx ’s company of some two hundred and forty souls who did not recognize his admiral after two weeks of cramped isolation was beyond help, Bolitho thought.

Neale said, “Lookout thinks there are two vessels, sir.” He shifted under Bolitho’s gaze. “The heat haze is making it hard to determine.”

Bolitho nodded, unaware that in his eagerness he had been almost glaring at him.

“Deck, sir! She’s a brig!” A pause, and then the midshipman named Kilburne shouted, “And-and one other, sir!”

The sailing-master whispered to one of his mates, “Gawd ’elp us!”

Neale cupped his hands. “What the hell are you talking about, sir?”

The second lieutenant who was on watch said helpfully, “I could get aloft, sir.”