The bread barge was in some ways a symbol of the mess. The number eight was carefully painted on the tub-shaped receptacle and beside it was the mess kid, a tiny barrel open at one end with what looked like two wooden ears through which was threaded a rope handle. Also marked with the mess number, it was used to carry hot food from the copper boilers in the galley to the table.

The carefully scrubbed net bag folded neatly on the bread barge and with a metal tally stamped '8' fixed to it was the 'kettle mess', the improbably named object in which all hot food was cooked, because boiling in the galley's copper kettles was the only way it could be done. The Calypso's cook, like those in each of the King's ships, was the man responsible for the galley in general, the cleanliness of the copper kettles and the fire that heated the water in them, but that was the limit of his cooking.

Each mess had its own cook, a man who had the job for a week. Number eight mess's cook this week was Alberto Rossi, a cheerful man who was nicknamed 'Rosey' and usually corrected anyone who called him Italian by pointing out that he came from Genoa, which in Italian was spelled Genova, so that he was a Genovese. If number eight mess decided in its collective wisdom that it would use its ration of flour, suet and raisins (or currants) to make a duff, Rossi's culinary skill would extend itself to mixing the ingredients with enough water to hold them together, put them in the kettle mess and make sure (with tally safely affixed) that it was delivered to the ship's cook by 4 a.m. and collected at 11.30 a.m., in time for the noon meal.

For this week when he was the mess cook, Rossi was also responsible for washing the bowls, plates, knives, forks and spoons of the other members of the mess, and stowing them safely. And, because bread, even if not appetizing, eased hunger, he had to make sure the bread barge was full - any emptying being ascribed to the south wind. Stafford, noting it was barely half-full, might comment: 'There's a southerly wind in the bread barge.'

Nor were the points of the compass limited to the compass and the bread barge: tots of rum were also graded. Raw spirit was due north, while water was due west, so a mug of nor'wester was half rum and half water, while three quarters rum would become a nor'nor'wester and a quarter of rum would be west-nor'west and find itself nobody's friend.

The seven men now sitting at mess number eight's table piled up their plates and basins. Three used old pewter plates, but four, the latest to join the mess, used bowls and looked forward to the Calypso taking her next prize, Rossi having explained carefully that a French prize years ago had yielded the three pewter plates in defiance of the eighth Article of War, which forbade taking 'money, plate or goods' from a captured ship before a court judged it a lawful prize. There was an exception which the three men interpreted in their own way - unless the object was 'for the necessary use and service of any of His Majesty's ships and vessels of war'. Admittedly such objects were supposed to be declared later in the 'full and entire account of the whole', but as Stafford said at the time with righteous certainty in his Cockney voice: 'S'welp us, we clean forgot.'

'Feels nice to be warm again,' Stafford remarked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. 'England's never very warm but the Medway's enough ter perish yer. The wind blowin' acrorst those saltings ... why, even the beaks of the curlews curl up with the cold.'

'Curlew? Is the bird? Is true, this curling?' Rossi asked, wide-eyed.

Jackson, the captain's coxswain, who owned a genuine American Protection issued to him several years earlier, shook his head. 'Another of Staff's stories. All curlews have long curved beaks whether it's a hot day or cold.'

'Anyway, I'm glad we're back in the Tropics,' Stafford said cheerfully. 'Don't cross the Equator, do we?'

Jackson shook his head. 'Not even if we go all the way to Cayenne. What's its latitude, Gilbert?'

The Frenchman shook his head in turn. 'I am ashamed,' he said, 'but I do not know it.'

When another of the French asked a question in rapid French, Gilbert translated Jackson's question, and the Frenchman, Auguste, said succinctly: 'Cinq.'

'Auguste says five degrees North,' Gilbert said.

'Five, eh? When we're in the West Indies, up and down the islands, we're usually betwixt twelve and twenty,' Stafford announced, and turned to Jackson. 'There, you didn't know I knowed that, didja!'

'Knew,' Jackson corrected automatically, and Stafford sighed.

'Oh, all right. You didn't knew I knowed that, then.'

'Mama mia,' Rossi groaned, 'even I know that's wrong. Say slowly, Staff: "You didn't know I knew that." How are these Francesi going to learn to speak proper?'

'Don't sound right to me,' Stafford maintained. 'And I come from London. You're an American, Jacko - Charlestown, ain't it? And you're from Genoa, Rosey. So I'm more likely to be right.'

Jackson ran his hand through his thinning sandy hair and turned to Gilbert. 'You'd better warn Auguste, Albert and Louis that if they are going to speak decent English, they'd better not listen to this picklock!'

'Picklock? I do not know this word,' Gilbert said.

'Just as well, 'cos I ain't one,' Stafford said amiably. 'Locksmith, I was, set up in a nice way of business in Bridewell Lane. Wasn't my business if the owners of the locks wasn't always at 'ome; the lock's gotta be opened.'

Gilbert nodded and smiled. 'I understand.'

'Yer know, the four of you are all right for Frenchies. Tell yer mates wot I said.'

Gilbert translated and considered himself lucky. Just over a year ago he was living in Kent, serving the Count while they were all refugees in England. Then, with the peace, the Count had decided to return to France (and Gilbert admitted he wished now he had taken it upon himself to mention to the Count the doubts he had felt from the first). Then everything had happened at once - the Count had been taken away to Brest under arrest, Lord and Lady Ramage had managed to escape, they had all recaptured the mutinous English brig and now the four of them were serving in the Royal Navy!

His Lordship had been very apologetic, although there was no need for it. Apparently he had intended (this was when he expected to sail the Murex back to England) to keep them on the ship's books as 'prisoners at large', and recommend their release as refugees as soon as they reached Plymouth, so they would be free to do what they wanted.

Gilbert could see his Lordship's motives, but he was forgetting that three of them - Auguste, Louis and Albert - did not speak a word of English and would never have been able to make a living. Serving in the Royal Navy, at least they would be paid and fed while they learned English, and life at sea, judging from their experience so far, was less hard than life in a wartime Brest, and no secret police watched ...

Anyway, his Lordship had explained this odd business of 'prize money'. Apparently it was a sort of reward the King paid to men of the Royal Navy for capturing an enemy ship, and as the Murex had been taken by the French after the mutiny, she became an enemy ship, so recapturing her meant she was then a prize.

Apparently, though, after they had recaptured the Murex and sailed her out of Brest, it seemed that only his Lordship would get any prize money because he was the only one of them actually serving in the Royal Navy. That seemed unfair because her Ladyship had behaved so bravely. Certainly neither he nor Auguste, Albert nor Louis had expected any reward, but his Lordship had thought otherwise and he had talked to the Admiral, who had agreed to his proposal. The result was that if the four of them volunteered for the Royal Navy, their names would be entered in the muster book of the Calypso and (by a certain free interpretation of dates) they would get their share.