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'I suppose they make great efforts to man the ships of war?'

The captain shrugged.

'Certainly.'

The shrug told much more than the word.

'It marches very slowly, I imagine,' said Hornblower, and the captain nodded.

'But of course the ships are ready to take the sea?'

Hornblower had no idea of how to say 'laid-up in ordinary' in French, and so he had to ask the question in the opposite sense.

'Oh, no,' said the captain. He went on to express his contempt for the French naval authorities. There was not a single ship of the line ready for service. Of course not.

'Let me refill your glass, captain,' said Hornblower. 'I suppose the frigates receive the first supplies of men?'

Such supplies as there were, perhaps. The Breton captain was not sure. Of course there was--Hornblower had more than a moment's difficulty at this point. Then he understood. The frigate Loire had been made ready for sea last week (it was the Breton pronunciation of that name which had most puzzled Hornblower) for service in Far Eastern waters, but with the usual idiocy of the naval command had now been stripped of most of her trained men to provide nuclei for the other ships. The Breton captain, whose capacity for rum was quite startling, did nothing to conceal either the smouldering Breton resentment against the atheist régime now ruling France or the contempt of a professional user of the sea for the blundering policies of the Republican Navy. Hornblower had only to nurse his glass and listen, his faculties at full stretch to catch all the implications of a conversation in a foreign language. When at last the captain rose to say good-bye there was a good deal of truth in what Hornblower said, haltingly, about his regrets at the termination of the visit.