"On your advice?"

"I was the only adviser he had left."

This was very interesting and much as Hornblower had imagined it, but it was not the point. Hornblower was more ready now to face the real issue.

"In the duel," he asked, "you exchanged shots?"

"His bullet went past my ear," answered Eisenbeiss.

"Then honour is satisfied on both sides," said Hornblower, more to himself than to the doctor.

Technically that was perfectly correct. An exchange of shots, and still more the shedding of blood, ended any affair of honour. The principals could meet again socially as if there had been no trouble between them. But to meet in the relative positions of doctor and patient might be something different. He would have to deal with that difficulty when it arose.

"You are quite right to remind me about this, doctor," he said, with the last appearance of judicial calm that he could summon up. "I shall bear it in mind."

Eisenbeiss looked at him a little blankly, and Hornblower put on his hard face again.

"But it makes no difference at all to my promise to you. Rest assured of that," he continued. "My orders still stand. They - still - stand."

It was several seconds before the reluctant answer came.

"Aye aye, sir."

"On your way out would you please be good enough to pass the word for Mr. Turner, the new sailing master?"

"Aye aye, sir."

That showed the subtle difference between an order and a request - but both of them had to be obeyed.

"Now, Mr. Turner," said Hornblower when Turner arrived in the cabin, "our destination is Marmorice Bay, and we sail at dawn tomorrow. I want to know about the winds we can expect at this time of year. I want to lose no time at all in arriving there. Every hour - I may say every minute is of importance."

Time was of importance, to make the most of a dying man's last hours.

Chapter XI.

These were the blue waters where history had been made, where the future of civilization had been decided, more than once and more than twice. Here Greek had fought against Persian, Athenian against Spartan, Crusader against Saracen, Hospitaller against Turk. The penteconters of Byzantium had furrowed the seas here, and the caracks of Pisa. Great cities had luxuriated in untold wealth. Only just over the horizon on the port beam was Rhodes, where a comparatively minor city had erected one of the seven wonders of the world, so that two thousand years later the adjective colossal was part of the vocabulary of people whose ancestors wore skins and painted themselves with woad at the time when the Rhodians were debating the nature of the Infinite. Now conditions were reversed. Here came Atropos, guided by sextant and compass, driven by the wind harnessed to her well-planned sails, armed with her long guns and carronades - a triumph of modern invention, in short - emerging from the wealthiest corner of the world into one where misgovernment and disease, anarchy and war, had left deserts where here had been fertile fields, villages where there had been cities, and hovels where there had been palaces. But there was no time to philosophize in this profound fashion. The sands in the hour-glass beside the binnacle were running low, and the moment was approaching when course should be altered.

"Mr. Turner!"

"Sir!"

"We'll alter course when the watch is called."

"Aye aye, sir."

"Doctor!"

"Sir!"

"Stand by for a change of course"

"Aye aye, sir."

McCullum's invalid bed was disposed athwart ships between Nos. 6 and 7 carronades on the starboard side; a simple tackle attached to the bedhead enabled the level of the bed to be adjusted with the change of course, so that the patient lay as horizontal as might be, whichever way the ship might be heeling. It was the doctor's responsibility to attend to that.

The watch was being called.

"Very good, Mr. Turner."

"Headsail sheets! Hands to the braces!"

Turner was an efficient seaman, despite his age. Hornblower could be sure of that by now. He stood by and watched him lay the ship close to the wind. Still came and touched his hat to Turner to take over the watch.

"We ought to raise the Seven Capes on this tack, sir," said Turner, coming over to Hornblower.

"I fancy so," said Hornblower.

The passage from Malta had been comfortingly rapid. They had lain becalmed for a single night to the south of Crete, but with the morning the wind had got up again from a westerly quarter. There had not been a single breath of Levanter - the equinox was still too far off for that, apparently - and every day had seen at least a hundred miles made good. And McCullum was still alive.

Hornblower walked forward to where he lay. Eisenbeiss was bending over him, his fingers on his pulse, and with the cessation of the bustle of going about the three Ceylonese divers had returned, to squat round the foot of the bed, their eyes on their master. To have those three pairs of melancholy eyes gazing at him would, Hornblower thought, have a most depressing effect, but apparently McCullum had no objection.

"All well, Mr. McCullum?" asked Hornblower.

"Not - quite as well as I would like."

It was distressing to see how slowly and painfully the head turned on the pillow. The heavy beard that had sprouted over his face could not conceal the fact that McCullum was more hollow-checked, more feverish eyed, than yesterday. The decline had been very marked; the day they sailed McCullum had appeared hardly more than slightly wounded, and the second day he had seemed better still - he had protested against being kept in bed, but that night he had taken a turn for the worse and had sunk steadily ever since, just as the garrison surgeon and Eisenbeiss had gloomily predicted.

Of course those had not been his only protests. McCullum had been as angry as his muddled condition would allow when he emerged from his narcotic to find he was under the treatment of the man who had shot him. He had struggled against his weakness and his bandages. It had called for Hornblower's personal intervention - fortunately Atropos was clear of the harbour mouth when McCullum regained consciousness - to calm him down. "It's a blackguard trick to pursue an affair of honour after an exchange of shots," Hornblower had said, and "It's the Doctor who's attending to you, not the Baron," and then the clinching argument "Don't be a fool, man. There's no other surgeon within fifty miles. Do you want to die?" So McCullum had yielded, and had submitted his tortured body to Eisenbeiss's ministrations, perhaps deriving some comfort from the ignoble things the doctor had to do for him.

And now all that spirit had gone. McCullum was a very sick man. He closed his eyes as Eisenbeiss laid his hand on his forehead. The pale lips muttered, and Hornblower, stooping, could only hear disjointed phrases. There was something about "fuses under water". McCullum was thinking, then, of the salvage operation ahead. Hornblower looked up and met Eisenbeiss's eyes. There was deep concern in them, and there was the least perceptible shake of the head. Eisenbeiss thought McCullum was going to die.

"It hurts - it hurts," said McCullum, moaning a little.

He moved restlessly, and Eisenbeiss's large powerful hands eased him into a more comfortable position on his left side. Hornblower noticed that Eisenbeiss laid one hand, as if inquiringly, over McCullum's right shoulder-blade, and then lower down, towards the short ribs, and McCullum moaned again. There was no change in the gravity of Eisenbeiss's expression.

This was horrible. It was horrible to see this magnificently constructed creature dying. And it was equally horrible that Hornblower was aware that his deep sympathy was allayed with concern for himself. He could not imagine how he would carry through the salvage operation with McCullum dead, or even with McCullum as helpless as he was at present. He would return empty-handed, to face Collingwood's wrath and contempt. What was the use of all his endeavours? Hornblower suddenly boiled with exasperation at the duelling convention which had claimed the life of a valuable man and at the same time had imperilled his own professional reputation. Within himself he was a whirlpool of emotions conflicting with each other.

"Land! Land ho! Land on the starboard bow!"

The cry came ringing down from the fore topmast head. No one could hear it without at least a little excitement. McCullum opened his eyes and turned his head again, but Eisenbeiss, stooping over him, endeavoured to soothe him. Hornblower's place was aft, and he turned away from the bed and walked back, trying to restrain himself from appearing too eager. Turner was already there, brought up from his watch below at the cry, and by the lee bulwark the other officers were rapidly assembling in a group.

"A good landfall, sir," said Turner.

"An hour earlier than I was led to expect," answered Hornblower.

"The current sets northerly here with steady winds from the West, sir," said Turner. "We'll raise Atairo in Rhodes to port soon, and then we'll have a cross-bearing."

"Yes," replied Hornblower. He was aware of his shortness of manner, but only dimly aware of its cause; he was uneasy with a sailing master on board who knew more about local conditions than he did, although that sailing master had been assigned to him to save him from uneasiness.

Atropos was shouldering her way valiantly through the short but steep seas that came hurrying forward to assail her port bow. Her motion was easy; she was carrying exactly the right amount of sail for that wind. Turner put a telescope in his pocket and walked forward to ascend the main shrouds, while Hornblower stood on the weather side with the wind blowing against his sunburned cheeks. Turner came aft again, his smile denoting self-satisfaction.

"That's the Seven Capes, sir," he said. "Two points on the starboard bow."

"There's a northerly set here, you say?" asked Hornblower.

"Yes, sir."

Hornblower walked over and looked at the compass, and up at the trim of the sails. The northerly set would help, and the wind was coming from the southward of west, but there was no sense in going unnecessarily far to leeward.

"Mr. Still! You can come closer to the wind than this. Brace her up."

He did not want to have to beat his way in at the last, and he was making allowance for the danger of the current setting in on Cape Kum.

Now here was the doctor, touching his hat to demand attention.

"What is it, doctor?" asked Hornblower.

The hands were hauling on the maintack.

"May I speak to you, sir?"

That was exactly what he was doing, and at a moment by no means opportune. But of course what he wanted was a chance to speak to him in privacy, and not on this bustling deck.

"It's about the patient, sir," supplemented Eisenbeiss. "I think it is very important."

"Oh, very well," said Hornblower, restraining himself from using bad language. He led the way down into the cabin, and seated himself to face the doctor. "Well? What do you have to say?"

Eisenbeiss was nervous, that was plain.

"I have formed a theory, sir."

He failed, as ever, with the "th" sound, and the word was so unusual and his pronunciation of it was so odd chat Hornblower had to think for a moment before he could guess what it was Eisenbeiss had said.

"And what is this theory?"

"It is about the position of the bullet, sir," answered Eisenbeiss; he, too, took a moment to digest what was the English pronunciation of the word.

"The garrison surgeon at Malta told me it was in the chest cavity. Do you know any more than that?"

That expression "chest cavity" was an odd one, but the garrison surgeon had used it. It implied an empty space, and was an obvious misnomer. Lungs and heart and the great blood-vessels must fill that cavity full.

"I believe it may not be in there at all, sir," said Eisenbeiss, clearly taking a plunge.

"Indeed?" This might be exceedingly important news if it were true. "Then why is he so ill?"

Now that Eisenbeiss had committed himself he became voluble again. Explanations poured out of him, accompanied by jerky gestures. But the explanations were hard to follow. In this highly technical matter Eisenbeiss had been thinking in his native language even more than usual, and now he was having to translate into technical terms unfamiliar to him and still more unfamiliar to Hornblower, who grasped despairingly at one contorted sentence.

"You think that the bullet, after breaking those ribs, may have bounced off again?" he asked. At the last moment he substituted the word "bounce" for "ricochet" in the hope of retaining clarity.

"Yes, sir. Bullets often do that."

"And where do you say you think it went then?"

Eisenbeiss tried to stretch his left hand far under his right armpit; his body was too bulky to permit it to go far enough to make his demonstration quite complete.

"Under the scapula, sir - the - the shoulder-blade."

"Land ho! Land on the port bow?"

Hornblower heard the cry come down through the skylight from above. That must be Rhodes they had sighted. Here they were heading into Rhodes Channel, and he was down below talking about ribs and scapulas. And yet the one was as important as the other.

"I can't stay down here much longer, doctor. Tell me why you think this is the case?"

Eisenbeiss fell into explanation again. He talked about the patient's fever, and about his comparative wellbeing the morning after he had been wounded, and about the small amount of blood he had spat up. He was in the full flood of his talk when a knock at the door interrupted him.

"Come in," said Hornblower.

It was His Serene Highness the Prince of Seitz-Bunau, with a speech that he had obviously prepared carefully on his way down.

"Mr. Still's respects, sir," he said. "Land in sight on the port bow."

"Very well, Mr. Prince. Thank you."

It was a pity there was not time to compliment the boy on his rapid acquirement of English. Hornblower turned back to Eisenbeiss.

"So I think the bullet went round the back, sir. The skin is - is tough, sir, and the ribs are - are elastic."

"Yes?" Hornblower had heard of bullets going round the body before this.

"And the patient has much muscle. Much."

"And you think the bullet has lodged in the muscles of the back?"

"Yes. Deep against the ribs. Under the lower point of the scapula, sir."

"And the fever? The illness?"

They could be accounted for, according to Eisenbeiss's torrential explanation, by the presence of the foreign body deep inside the tissues, especially if, as was probable, it had carried fragments of clothing in along with it. It all seemed plausible enough.

"And you are trying to say that if the bullet is there and not inside the chest you might be able to extract it?"

"Yes, sir."