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served by anticipation and diligence. They had a long way to go, and even further to come back.
    At eight bells Drinkwater went below to where Appleby, fresh washed but still smelling of gore, ate his biscuit and sipped his wine.
    ‘How is the patient?’ asked Drinkwater hanging his coat and hat in his cabin and joining the surgeon in the gunroom. ‘It was Tyson, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Yes. He’s well enough,’ spluttered Appleby, crumbs exploding from his lips, ‘as we were not in action I was able to take my time.’ He paused, emptied his glass and dabbed at his mouth with a stained napkin. ‘I saved the heel, if it does not rot he will walk on his own leg though he’ll limp and find balance a trouble.’
    ‘The devil you did! Well done, Harry, well done.’ Appleby looked pleased at his friend’s approval and his puffy cheeks flushed.
    ‘I must amend my books,’ said Drinkwater reaching to the shelf that contained the half-dozen manuscript ledgers without which the conduct of no King’s ship, irrespective of size, could be regulated.
    He opened the appropriate volume and turned up his carefully worked muster list. ‘Damn it, the man’s a boarder
    when will he be fit again?’
    Appleby shrugged. ‘Given that he avoids gangrene, say a month, but the sooner he has something to occupy his mind the better.’
    ‘I wonder if he can write?’
    ‘I doubt it but I’ll ask.’
    Mr Trussel came in for his glass of madeira. ‘I hear the captain is not stopping at the Canaries, is that so, sir?’
    ‘We stop only of necessity for water, Mr Trussel, otherwise Admiral Nelson’s orders were explicit,’ explained Drinkwater, ‘and we are to limit ourselves to one glass each of wine per evening to conserve stocks.’
    Trussel made a face. ‘Did you not know that powder draws the moisture from a man, Mr Drinkwater?’
    ‘I don’t doubt it, Mr Trussel, but needs must when the devil drives, eh?’
    ‘I shall savour the single glass the more then,’ answered the old gunner wryly.
    Drinkwater bent over his ledger and re-wrote the watch and quarter bills, pulling his chair sideways as Lestock joined them from the deck to stow his quadrant and books.
    ‘I can’t make it out, can’t make it out,’ he was muttering. Drinkwater snapped the inkwell closed. ‘What can’t you make out, Mr Lestock?’
    ‘Our longitude, Mr Drinkwater, it seems that if our departure from Espartel was truly three leagues west
    ‘ Drinkwater listened to Lestock’s long exposition on the longitude problem. Hellebore carried no chronometer, did not need to for the coastal convoy work to which she had been assigned. Recent events however, revealed the need for them to know their longitude as they traversed the vast wastes of the Atlantic. Lestock had been dallying with lunar observations, a long and complicated matter involving several sets of near simultaneous sights and upon which the navigational abilities of many officers, including not a few sailing masters, foundered. The method was theoretically simple. But on the plunging deck of the brig, with the horizon frequently interrupted by a wave crest and the sky by rigging and sails, the matter assumed a complexity which was clearly beyond the abilities of Lestock.
    As he listened Drinkwater appreciated the fussy man’s problems. He knew he could do little better but he kicked himself for not having thought of the problem in Syracuse. With a chronometer the matter would have been different and Nelson had offered them whatever they wanted from the fleet. He had had to. In the matter of charts alone Hellebore was deficient south of the Canaries. They had scraped together the bare minimum, but the chart of the Red Sea was so sparse of detail that its very appearance sent a shudder of apprehension down Lestock’s none too confident spine.
    ‘
    And if the captain does not intend to stop we’ll have further difficulties,’ he concluded.
    ‘We will be able to observe the longitude of known