Hornblower caught sight of a red angry welt across one white shoulder. He beckoned Thompson out of earshot. “You’ve been free with that starter of yours, Thompson,” he said. Thompson grinned uneasily, fingering the two-foot length of rope knotted at the end, with which petty officers were universally accustomed to stimulate the activity of the men under them.

“I won’t have a petty officer in my ship,” said Hornblower, “who doesn’t know when to use a starter and when not to. These men haven’t got their wits about ‘em yet, and hitting ‘em won’t remedy it. Make another mistake like that, Thompson, and I’ll disrate you. And then you’ll clean out the heads of this ship every day of this commission. That’ll do.”

Thompson shrank away, abashed by the genuine anger which Hornblower displayed.

“Keep your eye on him, Mr. Bush, if you please,” added Hornblower. “Sometimes a reprimand makes a petty officer take it out of the men more than ever to pay himself back. And I won’t have it.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Bush, philosophically.

Hornblower was the only captain he had ever heard of who bothered his head about the use of starters. Starters were as much part of Navy life as bad food and eighteen inches per hammock and peril at sea. Bush could never understand Hornblower’s disciplinary methods. He had been positively horrified when he had heard his captain’s public admission that he, too, had baths under the washdeck pump—it seemed madness for a captain to allow his men to guess that they were of the same flesh as his. But two years under Hornblower’s command had taught him that Hornblower’s strange ways sometimes attained surprising results. He was ready to obey him, loyally though blindly, resigned and yet admiring.

Chapter II