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though.
    Next day, in beautiful weather set fair to melt the hardest heart, the frigates put to sea. After a rapid reconnoitre they took up positions off the north of Barbados at the corners of a five-mile square and lay to.
    Then the Leeward Islands Squadron weighed and proceeded to sea.
    Kydd took his fill. It was always a grand sight, a battle-fleet moving out to take possession of the sea by right, a line of mighty sail-of-the-line in warlike arrogance and symmetry throwing down a challenge to whomsoever might dispute it.
    They formed up: the flagship
Northumberland
in the centre,
Atlas
in the van and
Hannibal
in the rear. Kydd knew from his memories of
Tenacious
off Toulon that it was now the stuff of nightmares on the quarterdeck of every ship, to stay not only in the line of sight astern from the flagship but, as well, at the stipulated distance apart. This would be achieved only by judicious and delicate sail-trimming: more showing of a headsail, a quick clewing up of a topsail corner, spilling wind to bring down speed. All in a frenzied reaction to deal with chance wind-flaws, drifting with the current and the sheer sliding inertia of thousands of tons of battleship.
    At last satisfied, Cochrane signalled the ‘Proceed’. Ponderously, the line began to lengthen, the ships picking up speed and settling on course to the north-north-west, each vessel nobly moving out one after another over the sparkling, gem-like sea. And on each an officer-of-the-watch sighing with relief that the task was now resolved to keeping pace and distance with the next ahead.
    Kydd reflected that the ignorant might scorn the entire exercise as futile and pretentious, but to know one’s ship in manoeuvre down to mere feet was a priceless asset in battle and tight navigation – and it was precisely why Cornwallis off Brest exercised his blockading fleet into miracles of precision with none but the seagulls to admire the display.
    Another hoist went up: frigates to deploy as instructed.
Acasta
, as senior, sent up her pennant, Captain Dunn now in command of the four. He lost no time in ranging out ahead. As the distant topgallants of the fleet sank below the horizon astern, he flew his signal for taking station,
L’Aurore
, the lightest but fastest, dispatched furthest to seaward of the four. They settled to their task – a sweep in advance of the fleet on a broad front all of sixty nautical miles across.
    Within hours the frigates were a long way apart, a tiny patch of white on the horizon to larboard the only evidence of
Magicienne
, their next abreast, but still in signalling reach with the oversize flags each carried. And, far to the south, the topgallants of
Atlas
led the line.
    Masthead lookouts were relieved of their important duty every glass – even half an hour so high aloft was a trial of the best of seamen, an Atlantic sea abeam causing a roll that ceaselessly swept and jerked them to and fro through a seventy-foot arc. One misplaced hand-hold and the impetus would tear them from their perch to pitch into the sea or end a broken corpse on deck.
    Kydd remained on the quarterdeck, staying to see the sea-watch hanking and tying off after the sail-trimming, which kept them at a pace that would allow them to stay within signalling distance.
    He was reluctant to go below for there could be no finer prospect than this: a lovely frigate at her best, in seas that lifted the heart with their beauty – and his to command, to direct and to cherish.
    The twist of fortune that saw him and his ship now in the Caribbean had indeed snatched him from Hell to Paradise. But close on its heels another thought came: if Renzi was right, was it a fool’s Paradise he was in?
    The voyage north was uneventful, the island passages clear of enemy battle-fleets, the broad ocean innocent of threat. Under boundless blue skies and hurrying white combers they ranged on to the north-west until they stood in with the Straits of Florida and lay to, awaiting the