'The plague, by St Peter!' squealed one of the young sailors. He would have headed a rush to the longboat.
'Stand still, there!' roared Hornblower, scared of the plague but with the habits of discipline so deeply engrained in him by now that he checked the panic automatically.
'I was a fool not to have thought of it before,' said Tapling. 'That dying rat — that fellow over there who we thought was drunk. I should have known!'
The soldier who appeared to be the sergeant in command of the Treasurer's escort was in explosive conversation with the chief of the overseers of the slaves, both of them staring and pointing at the dying Duras; the Treasurer himself was clutching his robe about him and looking down at the wretched man at his feet in fascinated horror.
'Well sir,' said Hornblower to Tapling, 'what do we do now?'
Hornblower was of the temperament that demands immediate action in face of a crisis.
'Do?' replied Tapling with a bitter smile. 'We stay here and rot.'
'Stay here?'
'The fleet will never have us back. Not until we have served three weeks of quarantine. Three weeks after the last case has occurred. Here in Oran.'
'Nonsense!' said Hornblower, with all the respect due to his senior startled out of him. 'No one would order that.'