In the starboard watch, one fine day when there was neither land nor sail in sight, Davie Paine was overseeing the work on the rigging and badly botching it. The old fellow was a fair seaman himself, but for all his deep voice and big body, his best friend must have acknowledged that as an officer he was hopelessly incompetent. "Now unlay the strands so," he would say. "No, that ain't right. No, so! No, that ain't right either. Supposing you form the eye so. No, that ain't right either."
After a time we were smiling so broadly at his confused orders that we caught the captain's eye.
He came forward quickly—say what you would against Captain Falk as an officer, no one could deny that he knew his business—and instantly he took in the whole unfortunate situation. "Well, Mister Paine," he cried, sarcastically stressing the title, "are n't you man enough to unlay a bit of rope and make a Flemish eye?"
Old Davie flushed in hopeless embarrassment, and even the men who had been chuckling most openly were sorry for him. That the captain had reason to be dissatisfied with the second mate's work, we were ready enough to admit; but he should have called him aside and rebuked him privately. We all, I think, regarded such open interference as unnecessary and unkind.
"Why—y-yes, sir," Davie stammered.
"To make you a Flemish eye," Captain Falk continued in cold sarcasm, "you unlay the end of the rope and open up the yarns. Then you half-knot some half the inside yarns over that bit of wood you have there, and scrape the rest of them down over the others, and marl, parcel, and serve them together. That's the way you go to make a Flemish eye. Now then, Mister Paine, see that you get a smart job done here and keep your eyes open, you old lubber. I thought you shipped for able seaman. A fine picture of an able seaman you are, you doddering old fool!"
It is impossible to reproduce the meanness with which he gave his little lecture, or the patronizing air with which he walked away. Old Davie was quite taken aback by it and for a time he could not control his voice enough to speak. It was pitiful to see him drop all the pretensions of his office and, as if desiring only some friendly word, try to get back on the old familiar footing of the forecastle.
"I know I ain't no great shakes of a scholar," he managed to mutter at last, "and I ain't no great shakes of a second mate. But he made me second mate, he did, and he hadn't ought to shame me in front of all the men, now had he? It was him that gave me the berth. If he don't like me in it, now why don't he take it away from me? I didn't want to be second mate when he made me do it, and I can't read figures good nor nothing. Now why don't he send me forrard if he don't like the way I do things?"
The old man ran on in a pathetic monologue, for none of us felt exactly at liberty to put in our own oars, and he could find relief only in his incoherent talk. It had been a needless and unkind thing and the men almost unanimously disapproved of it. Why indeed should Captain Falk not send Davie back to the forecastle rather than make his life miserable aft? The captain was responsible only to himself for the appointment, and its tenure depended only on his own whims; but that, apparently, he had no intention of doing.
"'Tain't right," old Blodgett murmured, careful not to let Captain Falk see him talking. "He didn't ought to use a man like that."