‘There she is, Dick! The Hotspur! I’ll not want to leave this beauty when the time comes!’ Excitement, or sheer pleasure: Bolitho had not seen him like this before. Perhaps strain and uncertainty, which he had always been able to conceal, were at last giving way. Bolitho felt it, too. The Hotspur, which had not even been discussed until today, as if it were a sworn secret, was a topsail schooner, small if set against any frigate or brig; but her style and lines would catch any real sailor’s eye immediately. She was lying at her anchor, and rolling evenly in the swell, showing her copper, bright in the forenoon sun, and the rake of her twin masts. A thoroughbred, and said to be new and untried, straight from her builder. But the ensign flying from her gaff and the few uniforms moving about her deck were identical to those they had left astern in Gorgon, and all the other men-of-war that lay at Plymouth. She was a King’s ship. It was difficult to accept the speed of the events which had brought them here.
