“I am going to make you responsible for the prisoner.”

“Sir?” said Hornblower, with a different intonation.

“Hart will be giving evidence at the court martial,” explained Buckland — it was a vast condescension that he should deign to explain at all. “The masteratarms is a fool, you know. I want McCool brought up for trial safe and sound, and I want him kept safe and sound afterwards. I’m repeating the captain’s own words, Mr. Hornblower.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Hornblower, for there was nothing else to be said.

“No Wolfe Tone tricks with McCool,” said Smith.

Wolfe Tone had cut his own throat the night before he was due to be hanged, and had died in agony a week later.

“Ask me for anything you may need, Mr. Hornblower,” said Buckland.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Side boys!” suddenly roared a voice on deck overhead, and Buckland hurried out; the approach of an officer of rank meant that the court martial was beginning to assemble.

Hornblower’s chin was on his breast. It was a hard, unrelenting world, and he was an officer in the hardest and most unrelenting service in that world — a service in which a man could no more say ‘I cannot’ than he could say ‘I dare not’.

“Bad luck, Horny,” said Smith, with surprising gentleness, and there were other murmurs of sympathy from round the table.

“Obey orders, young man,” said Roberts quietly.

Hornblower rose from his chair. He could not trust himself to speak, so that it was with a hurried bow that he quitted the company at the table.

“’E’s ‘ere, safe an’ sound, Mr. ‘Ornblower,” said the masteratarms, halting in the darkness of the lower ‘tween decks.

A marine sentry at the door moved out of the way, and the masteratarms shone the light of his candle lantern on a keyhole in the door and inserted the key.

“I put ‘im in this empty storeroom, sir,” went on the masteratarms. “’E’s got two of my corporals along wit ‘im.”