Midshipman Richard Bolitho threw up one hand to shade his eyes, surprised by the fierce, reflected glare from the water alongside. He waited while two seamen lurched past him half carrying, half dragging, some bulky objects wrapped in canvas toward the open deck and the hard sunlight. After the semi-darkness of Gorgon’s between decks, it only added to his sense of unreality.

He calmed himself. Another day. For most people, anyway.

He glanced down at his uniform, his best. He wanted to smile. The only uniform that would pass muster and avoid criticism. He flicked off several strands of oakum which he had collected somewhere along the way from the midshipmen’s berth, his home in Gorgon for the past year and a half.

Was that really all it was?

He took another deep breath. He was ready; and it was not just another day.

He walked on to the main deck, adjusting his mind to the noise and outward confusion of a ship undergoing the indignities of a badly needed overhaul. Chisels and handsaws, and the constant thud of hammers in the depths of the hull, while elsewhere men swarmed like monkeys high above the decks, repairing the miles of standing and running rigging which gave life to a fighting ship and the sails that drove her. And now it was almost finished. The stench of tar and paint, the heaps of discarded cordage and wood fragments, would soon be a cursed memory. Until the next time.

He gazed across the nearest eighteen-pounders, black muzzles at rest inboard of their ports, still smart, disdaining the disorder around them. And beyond, to the land, hard and sharply etched in the morning light: the rooftops and towers of old Plymouth, with an occasional glitter of glass in the sun. And beyond them the familiar rolling hills, more blue than green at this hour.