Stokes began talking rapidly, like a nervous child reciting something in front of grownups, something little understood so that all the pauses for breath came at the wrong time and punctuation was ignored.

Southwick glanced across at Ramage: a look that said, without equivocation: 'I told you so.'

Well, the man was half drunk; Ramage was prepared to admit that, but he was also prepared to overlook it on this occasion, because a new chaplain could be forgiven for being nervous when conducting his first service.

Out of habit, Ramage glanced at his watch and slipped it back into his fob pocket. The wind was holding from the northwest; almost a soldier's wind to round Ushant and stand across the Bay of Biscay, heading for the Spanish Finisterre. It was going to take months to get used to the idea that every ship sighted was a friend. For so many years the lookout's hail of a sail in sight was the beginning of a sequence which involved identification and then, if French, chase and battle and, if British, the challenge and exchange of the private signals for the day and hoisting of the three-figure pendant numbers by which each ship in the King's service could be identified by name.

Stokes was not only gabbling but he was doing it in a monotone. Ramage concentrated on listening to the words. After what seemed an hour, he looked again at his watch. Stokes had been talking for five minutes, and he kept referring to 'whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth', as though that was his text. Ramage again concentrated. Certainly there was no reference to trumpets giving uncertain sounds or anyone preparing for battle, but there was a great deal about punishing only those one loved; that one demanded higher standards from loved ones, and chastened them if they fell below them.

As Ramage reached for his watch again, he realized what had happened: Stokes was quoting from one of the two dozen sermons he had bought. Because the captain had forbidden him to use them, he had learned one by rote, or near enough, so he would seem to be speaking without notes and apparently directly from the heart. The only trouble was that he was preaching the sermon he had learned, but he had announced the text from another - presumably the next on the pile.

The watch showed the man had been talking for ten minutes. Ramage saw Aitken was also holding his watch and looking across at him.

Ramage stood up. 'Mr Aitken, I'll trouble you to take a reef in the foretopsail!'

The first lieutenant leapt up, shouting: 'Topmen, look alive you topmen! Afterguard lay aft - come on, fo'c'slemen, I don't see you moving!'

Southwick leapt up and jammed his hat on his head. 'Clear the binnacle,' he roared, 'get that flag off so we can get a sight of the compass!'

'Watch your heading!' Jackson shouted at the men at the wheel, unceremoniously pushing the chaplain to one side and helping to increase the confusion. He had more than a suspicion of what was going on, having seen the exchange of glances between the captain and first lieutenant. 'Damnation, you're a full point off course!' He winked at the men before they had time to heave on the spokes of the wheel.

Renwick had been too far aft to see what was going on and had never listened to a sermon in his life, having in childhood perfected the art of sleeping while looking awake, but he realized that pandemonium was required, and instead of marching his men forward and dismissing them on the gangway, he shouted: 'Marines - at the double, fall out!' Three dozen Marines in heavy boots suddenly began running forward in a cloud of white pipeclay which their movement crumbled off their crossbelts.

The bosun's mates were soon busy, repeating orders after the piercing trill of their calls. Topmen leapt over forms, knocking several over as they ran to the shrouds.

The Reverend Percival Stokes, unsure what was happening, wisely crouched down behind the binnacle, reminding Southwick of a frightened whippet cowering behind its kennel. Beside him a seaman was calmly folding the big Union flag, careful to line up the previous creases.

By now Ramage, still standing beside his chair, looked over the starboard quarter and then up at the sky. 'What do you think, Mr Southwick? That squall will pass us to windward, eh?'

'You're probably right, sir. By a mile, I think.'

'At least a mile. Mr Aitken! Belay that last pipe! Get these forms stowed below, and then you can pipe "Hands to dinner".' With that Ramage strode to the companionway and went down to his cabin, and Stokes finally bobbed up in the sudden silence, lifted his surplice and scurried below.

Ten minutes later, after Ramage had passed the word for them, Aitken and Southwick reported to his cabin. In answer to Ramage's wave, Southwick subsided into the single armchair with the contented groan of a man whose back ached and Aitken sat on the settee, very upright at first until he realized this was to be an informal visit, when he leaned back.

'Drunk and a filthy surplice,' Ramage said.

'And smelling like an overworked dray horse, sir,' Aitken added. 'The gunroom reeks like a stable.'

'Did either of you notice anything about the sermon?'

'He's learned it by rote,' Aitken said quickly. 'If he'd had to stop, I'll bet he couldn't have got started again.'

'Aye, and the sermon had precious little to do with the text he announced,' Southwick added. 'He said it was about the trumpet giving an uncertain sound, but even tho' I'm a free thinker I'd have sworn it should have been that line about "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth". I know it well; my father always quoted it, nigh on sixty years ago, when he laid on half a dozen across my buttocks with his belt. I always waited for his trousers to fall down. They never did.'

Both Southwick and Aitken watched Ramage. Southwick had served under him for many years, starting the day the young lieutenant was given his first command, the Kathleen cutter, by Commodore Nelson. What always struck him was that as an inexperienced young lieutenant or one of the best frigate captains in the Navy today, even though in terms of seniority his name was almost at the bottom of the post list, Mr Ramage was never indecisive. He collected all the facts, seemed to shake them up in a dice cup, and throw the answer across the green baize table. So far it had always been the right answer, with the result that his officers and ship's company had suffered few casualties in battle and collected a good deal of prize money.

Southwick had been surprised, when news reached Chatham Dockyard that the Treaty had been signed and Britain was at peace with France, that at least a quarter of the ship's company had not asked for their discharge. Ships would be paying off by the dozen, and the seamen who had served with Mr Ramage could go home to a tidy pile of money; enough to set up a small business, open a shop in their village, pay for a small house.

While the captain was in London on leave some had even come to Southwick to discuss it, and as soon as he was back on board many of them had asked to see Mr Ramage, and Southwick knew they were just making sure the master's advice was sound. Both master and captain, however, had said the same thing: that they thought the peace would be brief and the men risked being hauled back by the pressgang in a year's time . . . Neither he nor the captain had said, in as many words, that there would be no chance of them serving together again. For all that, each man had apparently weighed it up for himself: on one side a year's leave with money to spend, but ending up fighting another war in another ship, and on the other the wish to serve under Captain Ramage and his officers and with the same ship mates, but at the cost of a year's liberty.

Southwick disliked tale-bearing and he hated sycophants, but he was in some respects a jealous man: he was jealous of anything concerning his ship and anything concerning his captain. Jealous or, some might say, protective. He had been thinking about Percy Stokes for some time and this morning's service had decided him.