Free Heart of Oak by Alexander Kent

spoken during that gruelling journey, he had been very aware of the tough, silent companionship.
    Grenville was saying, “Backbone of any ship—mine was, anyway.”
    Adam saw a young woman peering down from one of the windows, on the floor beneath the room with the telescope. She was waving, and at a distance she might have been…He looked away.
    The hardest part begins now.
    “Attention in the boat!” The lieutenant stood at the foot of the familiar stone steps, the launch lifting and dipping on the choppy swell below him. A well turned-out crew, arms folded and facing aft. For them this was mere routine.
    The helmsman stood by the tiller bar, and beside him Jago was already on his feet. Grenville was moving briskly toward the boat, his face hidden, and it was then that Adam felt the full impact of what this moment must mean to him.
    “Allow me, Sir John.” He stepped over the gunwale and into the sternsheets, barely able to keep his balance. He saw the helmsman’s surprise, and knew that the lieutenant had turned. It was one of the navy’s oldest customs. A captain always boarded any boat after every one else, and was the first to leave, so that he would never be unnecessarily delayed or inconvenienced.
    He felt Jago reach out and steady him, and managed to grip his hand, and heard him mutter, “Well spoken, Cap’n.” He of all men would know what he had done, and the significance of his gesture.
    Grenville was following now, and the lieutenant was stiffly at attention again.
    For today, at this moment and with all honour, a captain was going out to his ship.
    The launch pulled steadily and unhurriedly toward the spread of ships which lay across the main anchorage, oars rising and dipping like wings. Other boats going about their business were careful to keep clear, conscious of the passenger who wore a captain’s bright epaulettes, or of the crest on either bow signifying the admiral’s own authority.
    Luke Jago gazed along the boat between the banks of oarsmen, all eyes astern, or watching the stroke. A smart enough crew, but how would they perform in open sea, in the teeth of half a gale? He looked away. It was force of habit.
A ship will be judged by her boats.
The hard way, or the easy way, the old Jacks always said. Or you’d feel the touch of a rope’s end, just to jog your memory.
    He saw a big two-decker, a seventy-four, anchored apart from all the others. Waiting to be hulked, or for the breaker’s yard, mastless and stripped of rigging, gunports empty. He glanced at the captain’s shoulders and saw his head turn, as if remembering
Unrivalled
when they had returned here. Those same stone stairs…He could almost hear some one saying, “Never look back.” But he had. He could still feel the pain.
    Now another two-decker, in stark contrast, standing rigging freshly blacked-down, ensign and jack streaming in the offshore wind, and men working about her decks, some pausing to watch as the launch pulled abeam. A seaman by the entry port, and an officer training his telescope to make sure that his ship was not about to receive an important and possibly unwelcome visitor.
    Breathe easy, matey!
Jago saw the captain’s hand shifting his sword away from his leg, unconsciously, his mind miles away, probably still in Cornwall with the woman he was going to wed. And no wonder. Or was he troubled by the speed of this new appointment? He had hardly uttered a word on the journey to Plymouth, even when they had stopped at some poxy inn for a piss and a glass of grog. More like a burial vault…
    He almost smiled. The captain had felt it badly.
Forgive my poor company, Luke.
How could you turn on some one like that? Like the handshake as he had stepped, and as a result all but fallen, into this launch. Jago had seen them staring. He was still getting used to it himself, and to his own response. Just a little while ago, he would have said it was impossible to change.
Bloody officers.
    He saw the one called