Читать книгу Lieutenant Hornblower онлайн

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"All hands, sir?" prompted Hornblower, very softly.

"Yes" said Buckland, desperately taking the plunge.

"Very well, Mr. Wellard" said Hornblower.

Bush caught the look that Hornblower threw to Wellard with the words. There was a significance in it which might be interpreted as of a nature only to be expected when one junior officer was telling another to do something quickly before a senior could change his mind--that was how an uninitiated person would naturally interpret it--but to Bush, clairvoyant with fatigue and worry, there was some other significance in that glance. Wellard was pale and weak with fatigue and worry too; he was being reassured. Possibly he was being told that a secret was still safe.

"Aye aye, sir" said Wellard, and departed.

The pipes twittered through the ship.

"All hands! All hands!" roared the bosun's mates. "All hands fall in abaft the mainmast! All hands!"

Buckland went nervously up on deck, but he acquitted himself well enough at the moment of trial. In a harsh expressionless voice he told the assembled hands that the accident to the captain, which they all must have heard about, had rendered him incapable at present of continuing in command.