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thought. Taking the names of the ships. Tit-bits of information which might convey something in return for a few coins.
    The door opened and Adam Pascoe stood inside the cabin, his hat tucked under his arm.
    Bolitho stood up and walked towards him, feeling something like pain as he saw the way the youth was holding his arm away from his ribs. Even in his lieutenant's uniform he looked the same lean boy who had first been sent to him as a midshipman.
    He said, 'Welcome aboard, sir.'
    Bolitho forgot the weight of his new responsibility, his unwanted clash with Herrick, everything but the youth who had come to mean so much.
    He embraced him and said, 'You've been in trouble, Adam. I am sorry it was of my doing.'
    Pascoe watched him gravely. 'I would not have killed him, Uncle.'
    Bolitho stood back from him and smiled sadly. 'No, Adam, but he might have finished you. Eighteen years is a beginning, not an end.'
    Pascoe pushed the black hair from his forehead and shrugged. 'The captain has given me enough extra duties for my pains.' He looked at Bolitho's shoulder. 'How is the wound, Uncle?'
    'Forgotten.' He led him to a chair. 'Like your own, eh ?'
    They smiled like conspirator s as Bolitho poured two glasses of claret. He noticed that Pascoe's hair was cut in the new style, without any queue at the nape of his neck like most sea officers. He wondered what sort of a navy it would be when his nephew's broad pendant flew one day.
    Pascoe sipped the wine. 'They are saying in the squadron that this command would have been Nelson's had he not lost his arm.' He watched him questioningly.
    Bolitho smiled. There were few secrets in the fleet. 'Perhaps.'
    Pascoe nodded, his eyes distant. 'A great honour, Uncle, but-'
    'But what?'
    'A great responsibility also.'
    Herrick reappeared at the door. 'May I ask what time you would wish the other cap tains to return aboard, sir ?'
    He looked from one to the other and felt strangely moved.
    About twenty years between them, yet they looked like brothers.
    Bolitho replied, 'I will leave it to you.'
    When Herrick had gone Pascoe asked simply, 'Is anything between you and Captain Herrick, Uncle ?'
    Bolitho touched bis arm. 'Nothing that can harm our friendship, Adam.'
    Pascoe appeared satisfied. 'I'm glad.'
    Bolitho reached for the decanter. 'Now, tell me what you have been doing since I last saw you.'
    2 Small Beginning
    Bolitho moved restlessly around his day cabin, one hand reaching out to touch objects not yet familiar. Around and above him the Lysander's seventeen hundred tons of timbers and spars, artillery and men creaked and groaned to the pressure of a rising north-westerly wind.
    He had to forcibly restrain himself from peering from one or other of the quarter windows to see how the rest of his squadron were getting on with preparations for weighing. He heard occasional shouts and the thump of bare feet as seamen raced in all directions to complete last minute tasks, and he could picture Herrick as he, too, fretted over each delay. It was all Bolitho could do to leave Herrick alone on the quarterdeck.
    As a captain, Bolitho had been made to take his ships to sea in every sort of condition. From a lively sloop to the towering three-decker Euryalus in which he had been flag captain he had experienced the anxious moments before the anchor broke from the sea bed.
    For Herrick it would be much the same, if not worse. To look at a captain on his own quarterdeck, remote and aloof from the bustle and confusion all around him, protected from criticism by his authority and his gleaming epaulettes, any idler might think he was beyond ordinary fears and feelings.
    Bolitho had thought much in that way when he had been a junior lieutenant, or for that matter a midshipman. A captain had been a sort of god. He had lived an unreachable existence beyond his cabin bulkhead, and had but to scowl to have every officer and seaman quaking.
    But now, like Herrick, he knew differently. The greater the responsibility