“Slack water now, sir,” announced Bush. “First of the ebb in ten minutes. And anchor’s hove short, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bush.” There was enough grey light in the sky now to see Bush’s face as something more definite than a blur. At Bush’s shoulder stood Prowse, the acting-master, senior master’s mate with an acting-warrant. He was competing unobtrusively with Bush for Hornblower’s attention. Prowse was charged, by Admiralty instructions, with ‘navigating and conducting the ship from port to port under the direction of the captain’. But there was no reason at all why Hornblower should not give his other officers every opportunity to exercise their skill; on the contrary. And it was possible, even likely, that Prowse, with thirty years of sea duty behind him, would endeavour to take the direction of the ship out of the hands of a young and inexperienced captain.

“Mr. Bush!” said Hornblower. “Get the ship under way, if you please. Set a course to weather the Foreland.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower watched Bush keenly, while doing his best not to appear to be doing so. Bush took a final glance round him, gauging the gentle wind and the likely course of the ebb.

“Stand by there, at the capstan,” he ordered. “Loose the heads’ls. Hands aloft to loose the tops’ls.”

Hornblower could see in a flash that he could place implicit reliance on Bush’s seamanship. He knew he should never have doubted it, but his memories were two years old and might have been blurred by the passage of time. Bush gave his orders in a well-timed sequence. With the anchor broken out Hotspur gathered momentary sternway. With the wheel hard over and the forecastle hands drawing at the headsail sheets she brought her head round. Bush sheeted home and ordered hands to the braces. In the sweetest possible way Hotspur caught the gentle wind, lying over hardly more than a degree or two. In a moment she was under way, slipping forward through the water, rudder balanced against sail-pressure, a living, lovely thing.