Nelson turned on the boy in a white blast.
"I am Admiral Lord Nelson. You're Mr. Midshipman Carvell. And I'll trouble you not to forget it."
He held out his hand.
"Your papers."
"There are none, sir—my lord. All burnt."
"Pah!" cried Nelson, and turned with a stamp.
On the table was a chart, a pistol at the corner of it acting as paper-weight.
He bent over it.
Kit, with bleeding heart, gazed at his back, blue-coated and white-breeched.
A darn in the seat of the breeches held his gaze. It seemed so odd somehow that Nelson's breeches should be darned. It was the last thing he should have suspected of the hero of Aboukir Bay. He longed to put out his finger and feel it, that darn in Nelson's breeches. Was it real?—or was it a dream-darn? It was real; he could swear it. And it helped him. There was something comfortably human about it. After all, then, a hero was only flesh and blood: he wore darned breeches.