'Thank you, sir.'
'Mr Tapling will continue as passenger with you.'
'Very good, sir.'
So when the crew of the longboat, toiling and sweating at the sweeps, brought the two lighters down the bay, they found the Caroline swinging deserted at her anchors, while a dozen curious telescopes from the Indefatigable watched the proceedings. Hornblower went up the brig's side with half a dozen hands.
'She's like a blooming Noah's Ark, sir,' said Maxwell.
The comparison was apt; the Caroline was flush-decked, and the whole available deck area was divided by partitions into stalls for the cattle, while to enable the ship to be worked light gangways had been laid over the stalls into a practically continuous upper deck.
'An' all the animiles, sir,' said another seaman.
'But Noah's animals walked in two by two,' said Hornblower. 'We're not so lucky. And we've got to get the grain on board first. Get those hatches unbattened.'
In ordinary conditions a working party of two or three hundred men from the Indefatigable would have made short work of getting in the cargo from the lighters, but now it had to be done by the longboat's complement of eighteen. Luckily Pellew had had the forethought and kindness to have the ballast struck out of the holds, or they would have had to do that weary job first.
'Tail on to those tackles, men,' said Hornblower.