As Your Lordship will, of course, understand, this is an indication that the Daring will be sailing soon. My information is that the amount of bonded freight is very considerable, and I am endeavouring to discover in what it consists. Perhaps Your Lordship might, from Your Lordship’s coign of vantage, find an opportunity of observing the nature of this freight.

I am, with great respect,

Your Lordship’s humble and obedient servant,

Cloudesley Sharpe,

HBM’s Consul-General at New Orleans.

Now what could Cambronne have possibly brought from France in large amount that could be legitimately needed for the purpose he had avowed when he chartered the Daring? Not personal effects, certainly. Not food or liquor—he could pick those up cheaply in New Orleans. Then what? Warm-weather clothing would be a possible explanation. Those Guardsmen might well need it when returning to France from the Gulf of Mexico. It was possible. But a French General, with five hundred men of the Imperial Guard at his disposal, would bear the closest watching when the Caribbean was in such a turmoil. It would be a great help to know what kind of freight he was shipping.

“Mr. Harcourt!”

“Sir—My Lord!”

“I would like your company in the cabin for a moment, if you please.”

The young lieutenant stood at attention in the cabin a little apprehensively waiting to hear what his Admiral had to say.

“This isn’t a reprimand, Mr. Harcourt,” said Hornblower testily. “Not even an admonition.”

“Thank you, My Lord,” said Harcourt, relaxing.

Hornblower took him to the cabin window and pointed out through it, just as Sharpe had done previously.

“That’s the Daring,” he said. “An ex-privateer, now under charter to a French General.”