“Easy all,” said the steersman with a final thrust.

It seemed unbelievable to Hornblower that he did not have to work his legs any more, that he was emerging into daylight, that no more underground springs would cascade upon him as he lay suffocating under a tarpaulin. The boat slowly slid out of the tunnel’s mouth, and despite its slow progress, and despite the fact that outside the sun shone with only wintry brilliance, he was quite blinded for a while. The chatter of the passengers rose into a roar almost comparable with the sound of the underground spring upon the tarpaulin. Hornblower sat up and blinked round him. There was a horseholder on the towpath with a pair of horses; he caught the line the steersman tossed to him and between them they drew the boat to the bank. Many of the passengers were leaving at this point, and they began to swarm out at once with their packages and their chickens. Others were waiting to board.

“Horatio,” said Maria, coming out of the firstclass cabin; little Horatio was awake now and was whimpering a little.

“Yes, my dear?”

Hornblower was conscious of Maria’s eyes taking in the disorder of his clothes. He knew that Maria would scold him, brush him down, treat him with the same maternal possessiveness as she treated his son, and he knew that at the moment he did not want to be possessed.

“One moment, dear, if you will pardon me,” he said, and stepped nimbly out on to the towpath, joining himself to the conversation of the steersman and the horseholder.

“Ne’er a man here,” said the latter. “An’ you won’t find one before Oxford, that I’ll warrant you.”

In reply the steersman said much the same things as he had said to the other horseholder.