From Portsdown Hill, the wind in their faces, they watched the fleet at anchor. Pennants, flags, here and there the streaked cream belly of a sail. The big ships were constantly visited by boats that fought their way, awkwardly but unerringly, across the swell. Further off, beyond the human work (the flogging of malefactors, the swabbing and coiling, the learning of stars, the difficult Arab maths), rain in columns of faint shadow drifted landwards.

The outing to the viewing place—the trudge out of Portsmouth, the trudge up the hill—was, Medina understood, intended to instruct him, and for the sake of politeness he asked questions about the ships, the town, the history of it all. But Corporal Calley either did not know or did not see fit to trouble himself with answers. They looked out in silence, the Spanish officer of cavalry, the English corporal of foot, both in mufti, both in long horse-coats bought that morning in the Charlotte Street market, until the column of rain advancing up the hill in a series of brightenings engulfed them.

They started down—the sheep-cropped grass, the London road, then into the town with its low roof of brown smoke, its gangs of sailors in bum-freezer jackets, its herds of cattle aimed at the dockside slaughter houses, the salting rooms, the sea.

Their boarding house was off the High Street. It was called Mrs. Cooke’s Place, a tall, precarious-looking building opposite a bottle shop in an alley with an open drain down its middle. The house had been Calley’s choice. They had come up yesterday from their ship, the Medusa, had entered Portsmouth through the pewter light of evening, had found themselves on the High Street, and after walking a little one way and a little the other, had turned into the alley. There had been no discussion. Medina followed where Calley led. Calley was an Englishman, they were in England, it made sense that he should take the lead. Also—more decisively, more troublingly—it was Calley who had the money, the whatever it was Captain Henderson had provided. There was a rule perhaps, a law even, that prohibited British army money being put into the hands of anyone other than a serving member of that army. No one had said so but it was likely. Anyway, Medina preferred to think it so. For his own needs he would have to manage with the shillings he had borrowed at the last minute from an English military surgeon for whom, in Lisbon, he had acted as a translator and go-between in an affair of the heart. Later, Calley might offer him money, something for cigars, miscellaneous expenses, though there was little, after eleven days at sea with him, to suggest that he would.