“I’ll hand over the ship’s papers, sir,” said Hornblower. “Will you come with me? I mean — they are ready in your cabin when you have time to attend to them, sir.”

His sea chest and ditty bag lay forlorn on the bare cabin deck, pathetic indications of his immediate departure. It was the work only of a few moments to complete the transfer of command.

“May I request of Mr. Bush the loan of a hand to transfer my dunnage, sir?” asked Hornblower.

Now he was nobody. He was not even a passenger; he had no standing at all, and this became more evident still when he returned to the deck to look round for his officers to bid them farewell. They were all engrossed in the business of the moment, with hardly a second to spare for him. Handshakes were hasty and perfunctory; it was with a queer relief that he turned away to the gangplank.

It was a relief that was short lived for, even at anchor, Hotspur was rolling perceptibly in the swell that curved in round the point, and the two ships, Hotspur and the waterhoy, were rolling in opposite phases, their upper works inclining first together and then away from each other, so that the gangplank which joined them was possessed of several distinct motions — it swung in a vertical plane like a seesaw and in a horizontal plane like a compass needle; it rose and fell bodily, too, but the most frightening motion, instantly obvious as soon as he addressed himself to the crossing, was a stabbing back and forth motion as the ships surged together and apart, the gap bridged by the plank being now six feet and then sixteen. To a barefooted seaman the passage would be nothing; to Hornblower it was a rather frightening matter — an eighteeninch plank with no handrail. He was conscious, too, of the barrel-shaped captain watching him, but at least that made him determined to show no hesitation once he decided on the passage — until that moment he studied the motions of the plank out of the tail of his eye while apparently his attention was fully taken up by the various activities in the two ships.