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'I thought you might have forgotten,' said Cornwallis, grinning. 'Hotspur's part of the Channel Fleet now. Her captain is forbidden by law to sleep anywhere except on board without the permission of the Commander-in-Chief. Well, you have it.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Hornblower, at last able to articulate.

'Maybe you won't sleep ashore again for a couple of years. Maybe more than that, if Boney fights it out.'

'I certainly think he'll fight, sir.'

'In that case you and I will meet again off Ushant in three weeks' time. So now good-bye, once more.'

For some time after Cornwallis had left Hornblower stood by the half-closed door of the coffee-room in deep thought, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, which was the nearest he could get to pacing up and down. War was coming; he had always been certain of that, because Bonaparte would never retreat from the position he had taken up. But until this moment Hornblower had thought recklessly that he would not be ordered to sea until war was declared, in two or three weeks' time, after the final negotiations had broken down. He had been utterly wrong in this surmise, and he was angry with himself on that account. The facts that he had a good crew--the first harvest of the press--that his ship could be quickly made ready for sea, that she was small and of no account in the balance of power, even that she was of light draught and therefore well adapted to the mission Cornwallis had allotted her, should have warned him that he would be packed off to sea at the earliest possible moment. He should have foreseen all this and he had not.