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that M. De Tocqueville survived my butchery. His debility was occasioned by loss of blood due to a severe grazing of the axillary artery which fortunately did not rupture entirely. The pectoral muscle was badly torn by the angle of entry of the ball but it seems we had the only chip of bone out of him. If it does not yet putrefy he will live.
    He had been mildly interested in the medical details for it had been an old friend who had looked over his rudimentary surgery. Mr Appleby, appointed surgeon to the frigate Diamond then fitting in the Hamoaze, had been ordered aboard Kestrel to check the wounded. He had been complimentary about Nathaniel’s unschooled suturing but had not let him escape without a lecture on the count’s injuries.
    Drinkwater smiled at the recollection. It had been an odd passage home. Of all the refugees Kestrel had brought out of France that last quartet had left an indelible impression. The feverish nobleman muttering incoherently in his delirium and the attentively ineffectual young Etienne Montholon were a contrast to their fellow travellers. The garrulous and enthusiastic Barrallier was a lively and amusing companion who let no detail of Kestrel escape his criticism or admiration. He seemed to cut himself off from the others, turning his back on France, as if desperate to be seen as anglophile in all things. Markedly different from the men, Hortense remained aloof; cold and contemptuous in the isolation of her sex. Her beauty caused a whispering, wondering admiration among the hands and a vague disquiet among the officers with whom she was briefly accommodated.
    Drinkwater was not alone in his relief at their disembarkation at Plymouth with their specie and the folio of plans, but they left in their wake a sense of unease. Like many of his contemporaries who had served in the American War, Drinkwater found a wry amusement in the visitation of republican revolution on the French. Many of those who had served under Rochambeau and La Fayette, men who had drawn the iron ring around Cornwallis at Yorktown and professed admiration for liberty, now ran like rats before the Jacobin terriers.
    But there was also a strand of sympathy for the revolution in Nathaniel’s heart, born of a sympathy for the oppressed awakened years earlier on the stinking orlop of Cyclops. He could not entirely condemn the principles of revolution, though he baulked at the method. Despite the sanctuary given the emigres, Englishmen of liberal principles and many naval officers of independent mind saw with eyes uncluttered by party interest. Drinkwater was no pocketed Whig nor heedless Tory adherent and he had precious little ‘interest’ to tie him to principles of dubious propriety.
    He lay down his pen and snapped the cap on his inkwell, transferring himself to the cot. He picked up the creased newspaper that Griffiths had left him. The print danced in front of his eyes. In the light of recent events Mr Pitt’s promises of peace and prosperity rang false. The letters marched like a thousand tiny black men: an army. He closed his eyes. War and the possibility of war were all that people talked of, paying scant attention to Mr Pitt’s protestations.
    It was odd that there had not been trouble over the Beaubigny affair since it seemed that only a pretext was wanted, a spark to fire the dry tinder of international relations. And it was not just the Jacobins who were eager for war. He had had dinner with Appleby and Richard White two nights earlier. White was already a lieutenant with five year’s seniority and the air of a post-captain. His standing was high enough to command an appointment as second lieutenant on Sir Sydney* Smith’s crack frigate Diamond. He had drunk to the prospects of ‘glorious war’ with a still boyish enthusiasm which had made Appleby curl his lip.
    The dinner had been only a qualified success. Revived friendships had a quality of regret about them. White had become an urbane young man, possessed