"Damn you, sir! You have set my standing orders to defiance and made Tenacious a spectacle before the Fleet. How dare you attempt an excuse for your conduct?" Captain Rowley's words could be heard right across the quarterdeck, even above the streaming rain and bluster of the filthy weather.

"Sir. M' respects, but I judged it t' be —"

"Judge? It's not your place to judge, Mr Kydd! No, sir! It is your sworn duty to ensure my orders are strictly obeyed. All of them — and most especially my written orders." Rowley's nostrils flared. "And this is not the first time I have had the disagreeable necessity of remonstrating with you concerning your conduct since I have come aboard."

"Sir, this is —"

"Enough!" Rowley shouted. "You, sir, have tried my patience too far." Kydd's stomach tightened. "You are now confined to your cabin until such time as the commander-in-chief is informed of your conduct and you have answered for it."

At the words, shocked faces turned: the place for a captain to discipline an officer was the great cabin, not on deck within earshot of the entire watch.

"Aye aye, sir," Kydd said thickly, and clapped on his sodden cocked hat. The die was now irrevocably cast: Captain Rowley was taking it further, to the august Admiral Keith, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet. Kydd turned stiffly and went below. This probably signalled the end of his naval career.

Rage washed over him. It was not so much the shame and futility, but the unfairness that of all the ghosts from his past it had been Rowley who had come back to haunt him. After the fearsome battle of the Nile two years ago Kydd had distinguished himself in Minorca and at the siege of Acre, then gone on to uneventful but steady service in Tenacious at the long blockade of Toulon, rising from fourth to second lieutenant under the cautious but fair Captain Faulkner. He had done well for himself, building experience and confidence, but now his hopes for substantial advancement in the fullness of time were crushed.

When Rowley had stepped aboard as the new captain of Tenacious, he seemed shocked to find Kydd among the officers. The last time he had seen him was on the night the famous frigate Artemis had struck rocks in the Azores; Kydd had been acting quartermaster at the conn and he the officer of the watch. At the subsequent court of inquiry Kydd had been prepared to testify against him but, with other seaman survivors, had been hastily shipped out to the Caribbean as an embarrassment.

Rowley, clearly troubled by Kydd's presence on this new ship, had reacted by making his life aboard Tenacious more and more difficult. It had been a hard time for Kydd and now it had come to a head.

Kydd bunched his fists as he relived the incident that had given Rowley the excuse to act. A squally spring north-westerly in the early hours of Kydd's morning watch had obliged him to shorten sail to topsails. He had duly sent notice of his action to the captain, in accordance with standing orders, then had employed the watch-on-deck to work mast by mast, leaving the watch below to their sleep.

A bell or two before the end of the watch, the squall had eased. East Indiamen and others had the comfortable habit of snugging down to topsails during night hours but Captain's Orders specified that Tenacious, in common with most vessels in the Navy, must press on under all plain sail. Kydd's duty, therefore, was to set courses again.

It would have been more practical, though, to leave it until the end of the watch, less than an hour away: after breakfast both watches would be on deck to make short work of it. In any case, a pressing need for speed was irrelevant in the endless beat of blockade.

Rowley was correct in the strictest sense, that Kydd was in dereliction of orders, and was bringing the matter — and all the other equally mindless "offences" — to the attention of the admiral, who would be obliged to take the part of one of his captains.

An awkward shuffling and clinking outside Kydd's cabin signalled the posting of a marine sentry. There would no longer be any privacy and the officers would ignore him for fear of being tainted. Only the first lieutenant would take it calmly, logically. Renzi would know how to act in the matter, but Kydd had vowed that his friend would not be drawn into the insanity between Rowley and himself.

His anger ebbed but his thoughts raced. It was less than two years since he had stood, with bloody sword, at the ancient walls of Acre and watched as Buonaparte skulked away in defeat. How things had changed. With brazen daring, the man had abandoned his army to its fate and escaped to France, where he had risen to the top in a power struggle and declared himself First Consul of the Republic with dictatorial powers. He had then brought together the military resources of the entire French nation into one fearsome fighting machine.

For the British, their earlier return to the Mediterranean had been crowned with success: defeat and annihilation for Buonaparte's great invasion fleet at the Nile followed by domination of the sea. The last major French presence, the fortress of Malta, had recently capitulated after a desperate siege, and the fleet was free to concentrate on locking up the remaining enemy forces in Toulon, off which they lay in close blockade.

Why then was there a sense of unease, of foreboding in the wardrooms of the fleet? It had seemed to Kydd that the very pillars of existence had trembled and proved fragile. Then, too, his great hero Nelson had scandalised many by his open dalliance with the wife of the ambassador to Naples and his subsequent involvement with political intrigue in that city. Kydd had stoutly defended him, even when Nelson was relieved of his command and recalled.

More generally troubling was the resignation of Pitt, the prime minister who had been so successfully conducting the war against such great odds. On the face of it, this had been on a matter of principle but it was widely held that he was exhausted and in ill-health. His successor was Addington, whose administration, of colourless jobbery, had already drawn from Canning the cruel epigram: "Pitt is to Addington as London is to Paddington."

And everyone mourned at the news that the King had suffered a relapse into madness on being informed of Pitt's departure from office. It was a depressing backdrop against which the war was being fought and bitterness surged back as Kydd contemplated his future ...

His interview with the commander-in-chief had been mercifully brief. Keith, a forbidding figure whom Kydd had only seen before at formal occasions, had listened with an expression of distaste as Rowley had brought out his smooth litany of the younger man's shortcomings.

Before evening, orders had arrived that now saw him staring moodily out to sea as a passenger in HMS Stag, a light frigate escort to a convoy approaching Malta.

It might have been worse. He had received orders to report for duty in distant Malta and at least had not been summarily dismissed from his ship. No adverse entry would appear on his service record. His career, though, was now all but over. Malta had run down its naval presence since the surrender six months earlier and, as far as Kydd was aware, only minor vessels were attending to the usual dull tasks of a backwater. All of the real action was at the other end of...