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well," he said in a meek, polite voice that made Walker turn back to his business with a smile. But Summersgill had seen the young man's eyes, alive with fury and a kind of sympathetic fear, and he heard the criticism at the heart of this surrender.
* * * *
    They threw Hare's body over the side along with a boy of thirteen called Joseph Zacharias, guilty of falling asleep on watch, who had been given the choice of starving to death or being thrown out to swim home. He was alive when the sharks got him, but the prevailing opinion was that it was still the better choice.
* * * *
    "I have never seen such a travesty of justice," said Summersgill. In the afternoon, when every spot had been scoured from the decks, the men were below, mending their clothes, and a chill rain had set in above, he had found Peter in the wardroom, head bent over a glass of port as though to veil his betraying eyes from the world. "No wonder the Admiralty have such a difficulty in recruiting enough men. Is it the same throughout the navy?"
    "I wonder you ask me, sir." The young man looked up with a glitter of green fury and shame like the sudden sparking of an emerald.
    "I ask you because it's clear to me that a bruised face is a small price to pay to be spared the lash. Because I have never for one moment believed that this is the career you love so well and write so eloquently about to your poor mother that she simply has to read the letters to all her neighbors."
    Kenyon gave a snort that might have been laughter and passed the decanter. "You know, sir," he said quietly, "that I am as recently come to this ship as you are yourself. But that time has been long enough for me to learn that Bates is an awkward, unhandy, ill-tempered rogue." He looked down, drawing a little noose on the table in the ever-present damp. "And that Hare was a good man. Well liked. Ready with a kindness. You understand? I spared the wrong one. I should have found a way to..."
    Silence for a moment, and Summersgill wondered how many of the other blank-faced officers suffered so, how many of the boys wept into their pillows every night, mute and hopeless. " Is this how the whole navy works? Is this how you would run a ship?"
    Kenyon looked at him sideways, with a wary look such as Summersgill had never seen on his open face before, then drained his glass and stood. "Would you like to climb to the fighting top, sir? There is a fine view. I can recommend it."
* * * *
    There was not, in fact, a view worthy of the name—gray waves and gray drizzle slanting sideways across the surface of the sea. Water ran down the masts and the rigging about them with a faint, musical trickle, and Summersgill huddled in his borrowed oilskins and felt impressed with himself for climbing to this eminence without a second's fear.
    "On the Northumberland we used to dance," said Kenyon, who stood with one hand on the shrouds, leaning out into unsupported air. "All the long weeks of sailing with the trade winds—the mids would skylark and the men dance and sing. The officers ... we put on a play, with a musical review and poetry readings."
    "Not like this."
"No." He turned with a flash of sudden intensity. "I'm not saying that we didn't flog. We have the combings of the jails thrust on us to turn into sailors. Dumb, illiterate, violent brutes, who don't understand anything but force. I am no opponent of flogging at need, God knows. But..."
He fell silent again, and Summersgill could see the keen gaze automatically sweep the rigging and deck, whether looking for nautical perfection or for the captain's spies, Summersgill didn't know.
"Do you remember my tutor, Mr. Allenby?" said Kenyon, seemingly at random. "He was a great judge of horses. He used to say that the last thing you want is a hunter so broken that it will only obey. You should hope for loyalty and a spirit to match your own, and to establish a rapport with it, such that—if you fell—it would return for you out of affection. There is no