STO'B 25

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The Chasseur was long lost to view by the time the Badger found Admiral Halsey, wearing his flag on the Viceroy, in the false dawn NW of Malta. Once this had been ascertained for certain, once Philip was sure that he wasn't actually sailing into the arms of a French squadron, he borrowed a razor and ducked into his cabin to shave and change into respectable clothes.

Neither task proved easy. Philip had noticed the cramped nature of the cabin before, of course, and he knew that neither he nor anyone else aboard could stand upright in it, but as he had not shaved since stepping aboard he had not realized just how ill-suited the little space was for such a basic task. The quarter gallery in which he had found the small mirror was fine for stooping over its bowl to wash his hands, but too cramped for him to wield his razor. The Badger's tumblehome, coupled with the outward lean of her stern windows meant that there were few places to hang a mirror where it would show anything other than the floor or the ceiling.

The solution, he discovered, was to stand on his table, raise the skylight and remove one of its sides. This was normal enough - the skylight's top was provided with hinges for just this purpose, and each of its sides was designed to be easily removed so that the whole could be replaced with a hatch when the brig stripped for quarters - and no one on the quarterdeck paid the least attention as he did it. But when he pulled out his shaving accoutrements and leaned his mirror against one of the skylight's remaining sides the helmsman stared.

"Mind your luff!" ordered the gunner, who was too far forward to see this little drama unfold but could not fail to notice as the sloop swung into the wind. "Liddle, what are you do- oh, my - eh, beg pardon, sir," said the gunner, turning and saluting.

"Carry on," said Captain Fitton, lathering his face and starting to shave as Liddle brought the Badger back on course for the squadron, "carry on."

Once he was shaved he turned over his meager wardrobe, including his rumpled coat, which still bore his lieutenant's epaulettes. Philip had served as a midshipman under the admiral when Halsey was still a captain, in the old Illustrious in the eastern Mediterranean. He remembered that man's terrible anger on an occasion when Philip had appeared on the quarterdeck sans hat, and another occasion when Halsey had mastheaded Jevons, also a midshipman in the ship, for failing to wear his dirk at quarters. He turned to the box in the desk, noting with relief a barely reputable pair of Commander's epaulettes - worn, heavily tarnished, and much hacked about. They were better than nothing.

By the time Badger joined the squadron, ducking under the Viceroy's stern to deliver Captain Fitton and his dispatches to the flagship, the epaulettes were better still, they having been polished by Simkin. The polishing had not done away with the marks of age, far less those of battle, but at least they gleamed in the sun. And, reflected Philip, he had great reason to be pleased with himself: he had made decent time in spite of his late departure from Minorca, and any lateness might easily be ascribed to damages from the battle with the Chasseur; he had captured a valuable prize, including the French codebook; and he had secured intelligence pointing to the capture of several more. The ceremony of being piped aboard - padded manropes held by white-gloved sideboys, the bosun's mates blowing their silver whistles, the fine stamp and clash of the marines as they presented arms, and the officer of the watch saluting and stepping forward to greet him only increased this sense of well being. He had thus entirely forgotten the shabby state of his uniform when the admiral's secretary showed him into the cabin, where he found the admiral - and sitting comfortably in a chair beside the great man himself, Mr M'Mullen.

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