Читать книгу Unconditional Surrender онлайн

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When Jumbo heard of it, he said: "Strictly speaking I suppose you aren't 'in transit' any more."

"I hope I am."

"Well, anyway, stay on here as long as you like. We'll find a way of covering you in the returns. London District are never much trouble. All stockbrokers and wine merchants from the Foot Guards. Awfully easy fellows to deal with."

But it was not for this that he had dedicated himself on the sword of Roger of Waybroke that hopeful morning four years back.

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In all the hosts of effigies that throng the aisles of Westminster Abbey one man only, and he a sailor, strikes a martial attitude. The men of the Middle Ages have sheathed their swords and composed their hands in prayer; the men of the Age of Reason have donned the toga. A Captain Montagu alone, in Flaxman's posthumous status, firmly grips his hilt; and, because they had so many greater treasures to protect, the chapter left him to stand there throughout the war unencumbered by sand-bags, gazing across the lower nave as he had gazed at the ships of revolutionary France in the waters off Ushant on the day of victory and death.