Baddlestone seemed to be in a reserved mood; he seemed as anxious as Hornblower not to betray himself.
“Then why not do it?” he said at length, after a long hard look at Hornblower.
“It’s prize of war and you’re the captain.”
Baddlestone voiced his contempt for prize of war that consisted solely of worthless papers.
“You’d better do it, Captain,” he said, after the oaths and obscenities. “They’ll be worth something to you.”
“They certainly may be,” agreed Hornblower.
Baddlestone’s reserve was replaced now by a look of inquiring puzzlement. He was studying Hornblower as if seeking to ascertain some hidden motive behind the obvious ones.
“It was you who thought of taking them,” he said, “and you’re ready to hand them over to me?”
“Of course. You’re the captain.”
Baddlestone shook his head slowly as if he was giving up a problem; but what the problem was Hornblower never did discover.
Next there was the strange sensation of feeling the unmoving earth under his feet as he stepped ashore; there was the silence that fell on the two groups of passengers — officers and ratings — as he approached them. He had to take a formal farewell of them — it was only thirty hours since he and they had fought their way along the French brig’s deck, swinging their cutlasses. There was a brotherhood in arms — one might almost say a brotherhood of blood — between them, something that divided them off sharply into a caste utterly different from the ignorant civilians here.
But the very first thing to deal with on shore was his letter. There was a skinny and bare-footed urchin hanging on the fringe of the crowd.
“You boy!” called Hornblower. “D’you want to earn a shilling?”
“Iss, that do I.” The homely accent was accompanied by an embarrassed grin.
“D’you know Driver’s Alley?”
“Iss, sir.”
“Here’s sixpence and a letter. Run all the way and take this letter to Mrs Hornblower. Can you remember that name? Let’s hear you say it. Very well. She’ll give you the other sixpence when you give her the letter. Now — run.”
Now for the goodbyes.
“I said goodbye to most of you gentlemen only a few days back, and now I have to do so again. And a good deal has happened since then.”
“Yes, sir!” an emphatic agreement, voiced by Bush as the only commissioned officer present.
“Now I’m saying goodbye once more. I said before that I hoped we’d meet again, and I say it now. And I say ‘thank you’, too. You know I mean both those.”
“It’s us that have to thank you, sir,” said Bush, through the inarticulate murmurs uttered by the others.
“Goodbye, you men,” said Hornblower to the other group. “Good luck.”
“Goodbye and good luck, sir.”
He turned away; there was a dockyard labourer available to wheel away his gear on a barrow, on which he could also lay the blanket-bundle which swung from his hand; it might be vastly precious but it would not be out of his sight, and he had his dignity as a captain to consider. That dignity Hornblower felt imperilled enough as it was by the difficulty he experienced in walking like a landsman; the cobbles over which he was making his way seemed as if they could not remain level. He knew he was rolling in his gait like any Jack Tar, and yet, try as he would, he could not check the tendency while the solid earth seemed to seesaw under his feet.
The labourer — as might have been expected — had no knowledge of where the admiral commanding the port was to be found; he did not know even his name, and a passing clerk had to be stopped and questioned.
“The port admiral?” The lard-faced clerk who repeated Hornblower’s words was haughty, and Hornblower was battered and dishevelled, his hair long and tousled, his clothes rumpled, all as might be expected after nearly two weeks of crowded life in a waterhoy. But there was an epaulette, albeit a shabby one, on his left shoulder, and when the clerk noticed it he added a faint “Sir”.
“Yes, the port admiral.”
“You’ll find him in his office in the stone building over there.”
“Thank you. Do you know his name?”
“Foster. Rear-Admiral Harry Foster.”
“Thank you.”
That must be Dreadnought Foster. He had been one of the board of captains who had examined Hornblower for Lieutenant all those years ago in Gibraltar, the night the Spaniards sent the fireships in.
The marine sentry at the outer gate presented arms to the epaulette, but he was not so wooden as to allow to pass unnoticed the blanket-bundle that Hornblower took from the labourer; his eyes swivelled round to stare at it even while his neck stayed rigid. Hornblower took off his battered hat to return the salute and passed through. The flag-lieutenant who interviewed him next noticed the bundle as well, but his expression softened when Hornblower explained he was carrying captured documents.
“From the
“Yes,” answered Hornblower in surprise.
