"Good morning," Lewrie said, to be polite-and to see if the fellow was truly addled. Will this'un drool? he thought.

"Er ah, hem… good morning to you, sir," the Lieutenant said with a grave formality, then returned to his dark study.

"Captain Lewrie? Is Captain Lewrie present?" a minor clerk enquired from the foot of the grand staircase.

"Here," Lewrie answered, springing from the pew bench, giving the officer not another thought as he followed the young clerk abovestairs with his bound-together stack of books and papers.

A pleasant ten-minute chat with Mr. Marsden, then Lewrie was passed on to a succession of underlings, from one cramped office to another, even right down to the damp basements where clerks would work on stools and makeshift plank passageways when the Thames flooded in Spring; to file his navigational observations, to hand over ledgers and charts, the final muster book to make official those crewmembers Discharged, Dead, or so injured that they were merely Discharged, and for what reason. Finally, long past his usual dinner hour, Lewrie saw the Councillor of the Cheque, where his final accounting was toted up, the last full-rate pay of a Post-Captain of a Fifth Rate was signed and handed over in full (an assortment of ten-, five-, and one-pound notes on the Bank of England, with only a few shillings and pence in real coin) and his whereabouts, should Admiralty have need of him, noted, thence placing him on half-pay for the near future-minus all the deductions for the aforesaid Chatham Chest and crippled pensioners, robbing him of the eight shillings per day of an active commission, reducing him to six shillings per day of half-pay, but really amounting only to a low three shillings!