Bolitho rubbed the small fragments on his palm and said absently, “The Six Hogs.”

Behind him he heard Partridge murmur admiringly, “If I’d not seen it I’d never ’ave believed it.”

Bolitho said, “Alter course a point to larboard, if you please, and pipe the hands to the braces.”

Keverne coughed and then asked quietly, “What are the Six Hogs, sir?”

“Sandbars, Mr Keverne. We are now about two miles due south of St Anthony Head.” He smiled, suddenly ashamed for allowing the apparent miracle to continue. “They call the sandbars by that name, although I do not know why. But they are covered with these small stones, and have been so since I can remember.”

He swung round and watched as a sliver of sunlight pierced the swirling mist and touched the quarterdeck with pale gold. Partridge and the others would have been less in awe of his navigation had he been wrong in his calculations. Or perhaps it was more instinct than calculations. Even before he had been bundled off to sea as a gawky twelve-year-old midshipman he had learned every cove and inlet around Falmouth and several miles in either direction as well.

Even so, memory could play tricks, and it would have been small comfort to the admiral or his own prospects if the coming day had found Euryalus aground and dismasted in sight of his home town.

The big topsails flapped loudly and the deck tilted to a sudden pressure of wind, and like an army of departing ghosts the mist seeped through the shrouds and moved clear of the ship.

Bolitho paused in his pacing and stared fixedly at the widening panorama of green coastline which reached away on either bow, growing and coming alive in the sunlight.

There, almost balanced on the jib-boom, or so it appeared, was St Anthony’s beacon, usually the first sight of home to a returning sailor. Slightly to larboard, hunched on the headland, its grey bulk defying the sun and its warmth, was Pendennis Castle, guarding the harbour entrance and Carrick Road as it had down the centuries.

Bolitho licked his lips; they were dry, not merely from salt air.

“Lay a course to the anchorage, Mr Partridge. I am going to pay my respects to the admiral.”

Partridge stared at him and then touched his battered hat. “Aye, aye, sir.”

Below the poop it was cool and dark after the quarterdeck, and as he strode aft towards the companion which led to the admiral’s day cabin Bolitho was still pondering over what might lie in store for him and his command.

As he ran lightly down the companion to the middle deck and past two small ship’s boys who were busily polishing brass hinges on some of the cabin doors, he recalled with sudden clarity how mixed his feelings had once been about assuming command of the Euryalus. It was common enough to take prize ships and put them to work against their old masters, it was more common still to let them keep their original names. Sailors often said it was bad luck to change a ship’s title, but then seafaring people said a lot of things more from habit than known fact.