Dreadnought Foster had displayed good sense in giving him that note; the doorkeeper eyed him and his bundle with intense suspicion when he first applied himself to him — it was not only cranks and madmen that he had to turn away, but the naval officers who came to pester Their Lordships for employment.
“I have a letter for Mr Marsden from Admiral Foster,” said Hornblower, and was interested to see the doorkeeper’s expression soften at once.
“Would you please write a note to that effect on this form, sir?” he asked.
Hornblower wrote ‘Bringing a message from Rear-Admiral Harry Foster’ and signed it, along with his boarding‑house address.
“This way, sir,” said the doorkeeper. Presumably — certainly, indeed — the Admiral commanding at Plymouth would have the right of immediate access, personally or through an emissary, to Their Lordships’ Secretary.
The doorkeeper led Hornblower into a waiting room and bustled off with the note and the letter; in the waiting room there were several officers sitting in attitudes of expectancy or impatience or resignation, and Hornblower exchanged formal ‘good mornings’ with them before sitting down in a corner of the room. It was a wooden chair, unfriendly to his tormented sitting parts, but it had a high back with wings against which it was comfortable to lean.
Somehow Frenchmen had boarded the Princess by surprise, in the darkness. Now they were raging through the little ship, swinging cutlasses. Everything on board was in a turmoil while Hornblower struggled to free himself from his hammock to fight for his life. Someone was shouting ‘Wake up, sir!’ which was the very thing he wanted to do but could not. Then he realized that the words were being shouted into his ear and someone was shaking him by the shoulder. He blinked twice and came back to life and consciousness.
“Mr Marsden will see you now, sir,” said the unfamiliar figure who had awakened him.
“Thank you,” replied Hornblower, seizing his bundle and getting stiffly to his feet.
“Fair off you was, sir,” said the messenger. “Come this way, sir, please sir.”
Hornblower could not remember whether the other individuals waiting were the same as he had first seen or had changed, but they eyed him with envious hostility as he walked out of the room.
Mr Marsden was a tall and incredibly elegant gentleman of middle age, old‑fashioned in that his hair was tied at the back with a ribbon, yet elegant all the same because the style exactly suited him. Hornblower knew him to be already a legendary figure. His name was known throughout England because it was to him that dispatches were addressed (‘Sir, I have the honour to inform you for the further information of Their Lordships that —’) and printed in the newspapers in that form. First Lords might come and First Lords might go — as Lord Barham had just come and Lord Melville had just gone — and so might Sea Lords, and so might Admirals, but Mr Marsden remained the Secretary. It was he who handled all the executive work of the greatest navy the world had ever seen. Of course he had a large staff, no fewer than forty clerks, so Hornblower had heard, and he had an assistant secretary, Mr Barrow, who was almost as well known as he was, but even so out of everybody in the world Mr Marsden could most nearly be described as the one who was fighting single‑handed the war to the death against the French Empire and Bonaparte.
It was a lovely elegant room looking out on to the Horse Guards Parade, a room that exactly suited Mr Marsden, who was seated at an oval table. At his shoulder stood an elderly clerk, gray‑haired and lean, of an obviously junior grade, to judge by his threadbare coat and frayed linen.
Only the briefest salutations were exchanged while Hornblower put his bundle down on the table.
“See what there is here, Dorsey,” said Marsden over his shoulder to the clerk, and then, to Hornblower, “How did these come into your possession?”
Hornblower told of the momentary capture of the Guèpe; Mr Marsden kept his grey eyes steadily on Hornblower’s face during the brief narrative.