Sublime

with very kind brown eyes – kind, but not foolish; and when he came back to the table, carrying a pot of coffee, they were hard and piercing.

and now his name had been brayed out in public – not even in the comparative privacy of the Board, but in a far more miscellaneous gathering – with the question openly directed at the chief of naval intelligence. It was unqualifiable. To rely on the discretion of these sailors whose only notion of dealing with an enemy as cunning as Bonaparte was t

if ever this war is to be won, it must be won at sea. Bonaparte has about forty-five ships of the line, and we have eighty-odd, which sounds well enough. But ours are scattered all over the world and his are not. Then again the Spaniards have twenty-seven, to say nothing of the Dutch; so it is essential to prevent them from combining, for if Bonapa

Biarritz

missed the point – the whole expense in this case would have been borne by the Spaniards; it would have been the Spaniards who provided the Royal Navy with the splendid example of four youngish post-captains caught in a great shower, a downpour, of gold – the money would not have left the country. Naval fortunes were not so common; and the fortunes

the scurvy latitudes