The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty,
Whitehall,
10th April, 1812
Sir,
I am commanded by the Lords Commissioners to inform you that their Lordships desire to employ you immediately as Commodore with a Captain under you on a service which their Lordships consider worthy of an officer of your seniority and standing. You are hereby directed and required, therefore, to inform their Lordships through me as speedily as possible as to whether or not you will accept this appointment, and in the event of your accepting it you are further directed and required to present yourself in person at this office without delay in order to receive verbally their Lordships’ instructions and also those of any other Minister of State whom it may be judged necessary you should address.
Your obed’t servant,
E. NEPEAN, Secy to the Lords Commissioners
of the Admiralty
Hornblower had to read the letter twice—the first time it conveyed no meaning to him at all. But at the second reading the glorious import of the letter burst in upon him. The first thing he was conscious of was that this life here in Smallbridge or in Bond Street need not continue. He was free of all that; he could take a bath under a wash-deck pump instead of in a damned hip-bath with a kettleful of water in it; he could walk his own deck, breathe the sea air, take off these damned tight trousers and never put them on again, receive no deputations, speak to no damned tenants, never smell another pigsty or smack another horse’s back, And that was only the first thing; the second was that he was being offered appointment as Commodore—a Commodore of the first class, too, with a captain under him, so that he would be like an Admiral.