I haven't any, you see."

"United States Navy," said Nelson, accepting the glass gratefully. "You have a brilliant man in Stephen Decatur, and your new frigates trounced the French soundly. But what do you in these waters since the Tripolitan pirates have been defeated?"

"Admiral," said Kirkham, sitting down and motioning Nelson to take the seat across from him, "explanations seem to be in order from both of us. How to begin?"

"At the beginning, perhaps," said Nelson with the ghost of a smile. However mad the circumstances, he could not but like this bluff flag officer. American or no, he was one of his own kind.

"That would take years," said Kirkham. "We have a saying at home which goes, 'The time, the place and the girl.' Its implications should be understandable to a man like yourself."

"Entirely," said Nelson with a faint smile.

"Well, Admiral, consider yourself the girl for the purpose of metaphor. We are roughly a hundred miles southwest of Cadiz, so the place and the girl are right—remember, you're the girl. It's the time that's cockeyed."

"Cockeyed?" said Nelson. Then, "Oh! And just why is it cockeyed, Admiral?"

"Because, dammit, you've been deader than a doornail for more than a hundred and fifty-five years. Look at that book in your hand. It tells the story, if you're man enough to take it! You died at Trafalgar on October twenty-first, eighteen hundred and five."

"And this is the night of October twentieth, nineteen-sixty!" mused Nelson. He shuddered briefly.

"Eh?" said Kirkham. He looked apologetic. "Sorry to give it to you so brutally, Admiral, but you're on a ship of men who have little longer to live. We've been washed by so much radioactive water our only hope is to get her back to port before we become derelict."

"Radioactive water?" said Nelson. Then he dismissed the question as of no account. He laid the book on the table without opening it and looked earnestly at his host.

"Tell me, Admiral, did we win?"

"You knocked them to pieces," said Kirkham. "Your twenty-seven ships of the line hit Villeneuve's thirty-three so hard, you forced eighteen to strike without the loss of a ship yourself."

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