At the slight touch of their hands, the captain went very still. Which was to say, even more stonily rigid than he had been before. But then, noticing the tightly folded square of paper beneath his hand, he did the stupidest thing imaginable. He tucked it into his breast pocket without even bothering to unfold it, let alone read it. Dolt. Ben gritted his teeth. It was a miracle England had defeated Napoleon if men with so little sense of strategy were in charge of the navy. That idiocy quelled Ben’s improper thoughts, however.
