CHAPTER VI
ON THE THAMES
THOSE on the Wanderer were all so glad to see him back, and showed it so positively, that he felt almost disloyal in wanting to leave the boat. Ensign Stowell, although he only returned Nelson's salute when the latter stepped aboard, later shook hands with him and enquired about the arm and was "so awfully decent," as Nelson called it to himself, that he found himself wishing that Fate would somehow fix it so that when his transfer came, if it did come, he would find himself still under the Ensign.
A week passed, and then another, and he began to think that, after all, he was destined to knock about Cape Cod in the Wanderer for the rest of the war. He had not mentioned the encounter with the Navy official to anyone, not even to Billy Masters, who would have heard it if anyone had. And as the days went by and it became more and more evident that nothing was to come
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