Allday threw a meat bone on to his tin plate and wiped his fingers on a piece of hemp. He regarded the other man with his steady, calm eyes for several seconds and then replied, “I can wait.”

Pochin glared through the gloom, his head cocked to listen to some of the men retching. “Lot of bloody women!” He looked back at Allday. “I was forgettin’, you are an old hand at this.”

Allday shrugged and looked down at his palms. “You never get rid of the tar, do you?” He leaned back against the timbers and sighed. “My last ship was the Resolution, seventy-four. I was a fore-topman.” He allowed his eyes to close. “A good enough ship. We paid off just a few months before the American Revolution, and I was clean away before the press could lay a finger on me!”

An old, grey-haired man with washed-out blue eyes said huskily, “Was you really a shepherd like you told ’em?”

Allday nodded. “That, and other things. I had to stay out in the open. To keep away from the towns. I would choke to death under a roof!” He gave a small smile. “Just an occasional run into Falmouth was enough for me. Just enough for a woman, and a glass or two!”

The old seaman, Strachan, pursed his lips and rocked against the table as the ship heeled steeply and sent the plates skittering across the deck. “It sounds like a fair life, mate.” He seemed neither wistful nor envious. It was just a statement. Old Ben Strachan had been in the Navy for forty years, since he had first trod deck as a powder-monkey. Life ashore was a mystery to him, and in his regimented world appeared even more dangerous than the privations afloat.

Allday looked round as a hunched figure rose over the table’s edge and threw himself across his arms amongst the litter of food. Bryan Ferguson had been in a continuous torment of seasickness and fear from the very moment Vibart’s figure had appeared on that coast road. In Falmouth he had been a clerk working at a local boatyard. Physically he was not a strong man, and now in the swinging lantern’s feeble light his face looked as grey as death itself.

His thin body was bruised in many places, both from falling against unfamiliar shipboard objects and not least from the angry canes of the bosun’s mates and petty officers as the latter sought to drive the new men into the mysteries of seamanship and sail drill.

Day after day it had continued. Harried and chased from one part of the ship to the next with neither let-up nor mercy. Quivering with terror Ferguson had dragged his way up the swooping shrouds and out along the yards, until he could see the creaming water leaping below him as if to claw at his very feet. The first time he had clung sobbing to the mast, incapable of either moving out along the yard or even down towards the safety of the deck.