With Churchill’s train stalled near Thurso in terrible weather and Churchill suffering from bronchitis, Clementine and the doctor worried that the trip to Scapa Flow should be abandoned. Churchill ended the debate by leaving the train, climbing into a car, and insisting on going forward. The party drove to Scrabster and transferred to naval vessels, with Churchill, Clementine, Hopkins, Ismay, and Halifax boarding the destroyer HMS Napier. Churchill relished the dramatic passage through Scapa Flow’s defenses, while Hopkins, cold and exhausted, was far less impressed and was even found sitting on a depth charge.

At Scapa Flow, Churchill and his party boarded the battleship King George V, which Churchill had deliberately chosen to send Halifax to America in maximum splendor and thereby influence Roosevelt. After lunch, farewells were exchanged, Hopkins gave General Lee letters for Roosevelt, and Halifax and Lee departed with the ship for the United States. Churchill and the others spent the night on the old battleship Nelson. The next day, Churchill tried the new anti-aircraft rocket weapon, but the demonstration went wrong when a projectile became entangled and exploded near the bridge, landing close to Hopkins but causing no serious injury.

When the party left the Nelson, worsening seas made the transfer from the admiral’s barge back to the Napier dangerous. Churchill climbed first, as protocol required, and reached safety despite a ladder step cracking under him. Hopkins followed, the rung broke, and he nearly fell into the gap between the vessels before seamen caught him by the shoulders. Churchill’s shouted warning captured both the peril of the moment and his own rough humor.

On the journey back south, Churchill stopped in Glasgow to inspect civilian volunteers and repeatedly displayed Hopkins as Roosevelt’s personal representative, even when Hopkins tried to hide from the attention. That evening at a private dinner, Hopkins delivered the chapter’s decisive moment. After teasing Britain and Churchill, Hopkins said he would tell Roosevelt the words of Ruth: “Whither thou goest, I will go,” then added, “Even to the end.” Churchill wept because Hopkins’s words signaled not merely sympathy but deep American commitment to Britain’s survival.

The chapter then widens beyond the trip itself. Colville, still entangled in his unhappy love for Gay Margesson, visited her in Oxford, returned discouraged, and nearly wrote a final break letter before deciding he could not let go. In Germany, Rudolf Hess prepared a secret mission to Britain to seek peace, but his first attempt failed when he could not hold his course and returned to Munich. Meanwhile Hopkins’s visit stretched far beyond its planned length, and his warmth, informality, and growing friendship with Churchill helped strengthen Anglo-American feeling, culminating in bomb-damage tours, evenings at Chequers, and an atmosphere in which the bond between Britain and America felt newly real.