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only one had moved since yesterday. Beautiful ships: though in his opinion they over-raked their masts.
    Now the moment was coming. The church tower was almost in line with the blue dome, and he focused with renewed attention. The land hardly seemed to move at all, but gradually the arms of the Petite Rade opened, and there was the inner harbour, a forest of masts, all with their yards across, all in apparent readiness to come out and fight. A vice-admiral's flag, a rear-admiral's, a commodore's broad pennant: no change. The arms were closing; they glided imperceptibly together, and the Petite Rade was closed.
    Jack shifted his aim until the Faro hill came into sight, then the hill behind it, and he searched the road for the little inn where he and Stephen and Captain Christy Pallière had eaten and drunk such a capital dinner not so very long ago, together with another French sea-officer whose name he forgot. Precious hot then: precious cold now. Wonderful food then - Lord, how they had stuffed! precious short commons now. At the thought of that meal his stomach gave a twinge: the Lively, though she considered herself the wealthiest ship on the station and conducted herself with a certain reserve towards the paupers in company, was as short of fresh provisions, tobacco, firewood and water as the rest of the fleet, and because of a murrain among the sheep and measles in the pigsty even her officers' stores were being eked out with the wicked old salt horse of his 'young gentleman' days, while all hands had been eating ship's biscuits for a great while now. There was a small shoulder of not altogether healthy mutton for Jack's dinner: 'Shall I invite the officer of the watch?' he wondered. 'It is some time since I had anyone to the cabin, apart from breakfast.' It was some time, too, since he had spoken to anyone on a footing of real equality or with any free exchange of minds. His officers - or rather Captain Hamond's officers, for Jack had had no hand in choosing or forming them - entertained him to dinner once a week in the gunroom, and he invited them quite often to the cabin, almost always breakfasting with the officer and midshipman of the morning watch; but these were never very cheerful occasions. The gentlemanly, but slightly Benthamite, gunroom were strict observers of the naval etiquette that prevented any subordinate from speaking to his captain without being spoken to first; and they had grown thoroughly used to Captain Hamond, to whose mind this was a congenial rigour. And then again they were a proud set of men- most of them could afford to be - and they had a horror of the ingratiating manoeuvres, the currying of favour that was to be seen in some ships, or any hint
    of it: once they had had an overpliable third lieutenant wished upon them, and they had obliged him to exchange into the Achilles within a couple of months. They carried this attitude pretty high, and without disliking their temporary commander in the very least - indeed they valued him exceedingly both as a seaman and a fighting captain -they unconsciously imposed an Olympian role upon him; and at times the silence in which he lived made him feel utterly forlorn. At times only, however, for he was not often idle; there were duties that even the most perfect first lieutenant could not take off his hands, and then again in the forenoon he supervised the midshipmen's lessons in his cabin. They were a likeable set of youngsters, and even the Godlike presence of the captain, the severity of their schoolmaster, and the scrubbed, staid example of their elders could not repress their cheerfulness. Even hunger could not do so, and they had been eating rats this last month and more, rats caught in the bowels of the ship by the captain of the hold and laid out, neatly skinned, opened and cleaned, like tiny sheep, in the orlop, for sale at a price that rose week by week, to reach its present shocking rate of fivepence a knob.
    Jack was fond of the young, and