Herrick had studied Bolitho’s brooding profile, aware perhaps for the first time of the man’s constant inner battle. “All the same, sir, she outgunned us!” He had watched for some sign of the Bolitho he had seen waving his sword on the starboard gangway while shots had hammered down around him like hail. But there had been nothing. He had ended lamely, “You’ll see, sir, things will be different after this.”

Bolitho had straightened his back, as if throwing off some invisible weight. When he had turned his grey eyes had been cold and unfeeling. “I hope you are right, Mr Herrick! For my part I was disgusted with such a shambles! I dread to contemplate what might have happened in a fight to the finish!”

Herrick had felt himself flushing. “I was only thinking . . .”

Bolitho had snapped. “When I require an opinion from my third lieutenant I will let him know! Until that moment, Mr Herrick, perhaps you would be good enough to make your people get to work! There will be time later for suppositions and self-adulation!” He had swung on his heel and recommenced his pacing.

Herrick watched the surgeon’s party carry another limp corpse from the main hatch and lay it beside the others. Again, another picture of Bolitho sprang to his mind.

Herrick had been between decks on a tour of inspection with the carpenter. There were no shot holes beneath the water-line, but it had been his duty to make sure for his own satisfaction. Still dulled by the noise of battle he had followed Ledward beneath the massive, curved beams, his tired eyes half mesmerised by the man’s shaded lantern. Together they had stepped through a screen and entered a scene from hell itself.

Lanterns ringed the deck space, to allow none of the horror to escape his eyes, and in the centre of the yellow glare, strapped and writhing like a sacrifice on an altar, was a badly wounded seaman, his leg already half amputated by Tobias Ellice, the surgeon. The latter’s fat, brick-red face was devoid of expression as his bloody fingers worked busily with the glittering saw, his chins bouncing in time against the top of his scarlet-daubed apron. His assistants were using all their strength to restrain the struggling victim and pin his spread-eagled body on top of the platform of sea-chests, which sufficed as an operating table. The man had rolled his eyes with each nerve-searing thrust of the saw, had bitten into the leather strap between his teeth until the blood had spurted from his lips, and Ellice had carried on with his amputation.

Around the circle of light the other wretched wounded had awaited their turn, some propped on their elbows as if unable to tear their eyes from the gruesome spectacle. Others lay moaning and sobbing in the shadows, their lives ebbing away and thereby spared the agony of knife and saw. The air had been thick with the stench of blood and rum, the latter being the only true way of killing the victims’ senses before their turn came.