Rear admiral Lord Hornblower, for all his proud appointment as Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Ships and Vessels in the West Indies, paid his official visit to New Orleans in HM schooner Crab, only mounting two six-pounders and with a crew of no more than sixteen men, not counting supernumeraries.

His Britannic Majesty’s Consul-General at New Orleans, Mr. Cloudesley Sharpe, remarked on the fact.

“I hardly expected to see Your Lordship in so diminutive a craft,” he said, looking round him. He had driven down in his carriage to the pier against which Crab was lying, and had sent his liveried footman to the gangway to announce him, and it had been something of an anticlimax to be received by the trilling of the only two bosun’s calls that Crab could muster, and to find on the quarterdeck to receive him, besides the Admiral and his flag-lieutenant, a mere lieutenant in command.

“The exigencies of the service, sir,” explained Hornblower. “But if I may lead the way below I can offer you whatever hospitality this temporary flagship of mine affords.”

Mr. Sharpe—surely there never was a name that accorded so ill with its possessor’s figure, for he was a fat man, a mountain of puffy flesh—squeezed himself into a chair at the table in the pleasant little cabin, and replied to Hornblower’s suggestion of breakfast with the statement that he had already broken his fast. He obviously had the gravest doubts as to the quality of any breakfast that could be served in this little ship. Gerard, the flag-lieutenant, made himself inconspicuous in a corner of the cabin, notebook and pencil on his knee, while Hornblower reopened the conversation.

“Phoebe was struck by lightning off Morant Cape,” said Hornblower. “She was the ship I had planned to come in. Clorinda was already in dock, refitting. And Roebuck’s off Curacao, keeping an eye on the Dutchmen—there’s a brisk trade in arms with Venezuela at present.”