Captain North interrupted him without ceremony. "Well," said he to Matterson, "I've no doubt you'll make a competent officer."
His abruptness left Matterson no excuse for replying; so, when the captain went below, the chief mate stepped over to the rail. There, frowning slightly now and then, he remained for a long time. It did not take Arnold Lamont's intuition to perceive that he, as well as Gleazen, was puzzled and disappointed by the way things had turned out.
CHAPTER XIV
LAND HO!
With Captain North back on board again, we felt great confidence for the future; and while we remained in Havana there was no other attempt, so far as I know, to do us harm. But there was that in the wind which kept us always uneasy; and at no time after the night when Sim Muzzy left us, never to return to the brig Adventure, did we have a moment of complete security.
Every one asked questions about poor Sim, and by the way the various ones received our answers they indicated much of their own attitude toward us. Abe Guptil was moved almost to tears, and most of the men forward shook their heads sympathetically, although in my presence, since I was not one of them, they said little. But Matterson would smile with a certain unkind satisfaction, and Neil Gleazen would laugh softly, and here and there some one or other of the men would make sly jests or cast sidelong glances at Arnold and me.
Of all the men on board, Seth Upham was conspicuously the most disturbed; and as he gloomily paced the deck,—a practice he continued even after Captain North had returned,—I heard him more than once murmuring to himself, "Sim, Sim, O my poor Sim! Into what a plight I have led you!"
Arnold and I suggested in the cabin that we send out a searching party to see what we could learn of Sim's fate, and Uncle Seth urged it madly upon the others; but Gleazen and Matterson would hear nothing of it, and even Gideon North told us frankly that he regarded such measures as hopeless.
"The man's gone and I'm sorry," he said; "but I honestly believe it is useless for us to try to help him now."