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“I’ll show you to the cabin, Cap’n.” He chuckled. “Falmouth rabbits have more room!”
    He watched as Bolitho groped his way to the small companion ladder near the tiller, beside which a master’s mate and two helmsmen were already pointedly at their stations.
    Once at sea things might seem better, he thought.
    Allday heard the boy’s desperate retching and hurried to find him. Once he paused, his chin just level with the deck coaming, and watched the land sway over as the anchor tore free from the ground.
    Sails banged and thundered in confusion and he saw the great shadow of the boomed mainsail slice overhead like a banner.
    They had done with the land. This was their place. It was enough.
    Allday tapped on the cabin door and had to bend almost double to peer inside. He saw Bolitho with his back to the bulkhead, the three commanding officers of the anchored cutters packed in around the table as best they could.
    â€œAll secure, Cap’n.” Just a brief exchange of glances, but Bolitho understood that he would be outside the door and make sure that nobody should hear what he was not intended to. Allday knew from experience. Little ships had the biggest ears, and Bolitho needed his first meeting to be undisturbed.
    Before he withdrew, Allday also noticed that Bolitho was wearing his old seagoing coat, with its tarnished buttons, displaying no epaulettes on the shoulders. A coat stitched and repaired so many times that, when his sister Nancy had held it up with dismay and tried to persuade him to get rid of it, Allday had realised just how close he had become to the family.
    Nancy had been helping to pack two chests for Bolitho’s journey to London to plead for an appointment. During the long illness which they had shared in their various ways Allday had stood firm, knowing it was his strength which Bolitho depended on. But the mention of the coat, such a simple thing, had broken his defences, taken him by surprise like boarders in the night.
    â€œNo, Miss Nancy! Leave it be!” Then in a defeated voice, his eyes downcast, he had explained, “It was what the Captain’s Lady wore in the boat, afore she—” He had been unable to go on.
    Get rid of that coat? It would have to fall apart first.
    The door closed and Bolitho glanced around at their various expressions.
    On the short passage to this anchorage he had spoken to Paice as much as he could without interfering with his duties of shiphandling. A tall, powerful figure, but one who rarely raised his voice when passing commands. He did not seem to need it. The combined wardroom and cabin had no headroom at all, and only directly beneath the skylight was it possible to stand upright. But Paice had to stoop even there.
    He was an excellent seaman, with a master’s eye for wind and current. He seemed to feel the moods of his sturdy command even before the helmsmen who stood on either side of the long tiller bar. But he was slow to answer questions; not resentful, more defensive. As if he searched for any possible criticism, not of himself but of his Telemachus.
    It was a perfect evening after all. Pink clouds as dusk moved across the headland which sheltered the anchorage, with the first lamps already glittering like fireflies from the homes of Queenborough.
    The three cutters might look as alike as peas in a pod to any watching landsmen, but Bolitho had already marked their small differences, no more apparent than right here with their commanders. Lieutenant Charles Queely of the Wakeful was in his mid-twenties, a dark-haired man with a hooked nose and deepset eyes, ever-alert like a falcon. The face of a scholar, a clergyman perhaps; only his speech and dress marked him as a sea-officer. He hailed from the Isle of Man, and came of generations of deep-water sailormen. Lieutenant Hector Vatass of the Snapdragon was a direct contrast. Fair-haired, with a homely face and blue eyes which would deceive no one. An