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'See that I am called when any alteration of course is necessary, if you please, Mr Bush,' he said.

'Aye aye, sir.'

The deck was heaving, but he knew it was not heaving as much as his distorted mind told him it was. He forced himself somehow to walk aft to his cabin; twice he had to stop and brace himself, and when Hotspur rose to a wave he was nearly made to run--certainly he had to walk faster than a captain should--past the sentry, and he fetched up against the door with some little violence. It was no comfort--in fact it added to his distress--to see that the sentry had a bucket on the deck beside him. He wrenched open the door, hung suspended for a moment as Hotspur completed her pitch, with her stern in the air, and then crashed down groaning on to his cot, his feet dragging on the deck as the cot swung.

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Hornblower sat at his desk in his cabin holding a package in his hand. Five minutes earlier he had unlocked his chest and taken this out; in five minutes more he would be entitled to open it--at least, that was what his dead reckoning indicated. It was a remarkably heavy package; it might be weighted with shot or scrap metal, except that Admiral Cornwallis was hardly likely to send shot or scrap metal to one of his captains. It was heavily sealed, in four places, and the seals were unbroken. Inked upon the canvas wrapper was the superscription:--