"Don't tell him so, sir, for he doesn't think small beer of himself."
"I shall waste no more words on him. It is to you I speak, and you know I speak the truth. Here is a ship, in which, for certain reasons known to yourself, the captain is under the mate."
"Well, sir," said Wylie good-humoredly, "it is no use trying to deceive a gentleman like you. Our skipper is an excellent seaman, but he has got a fault." Then Wylie imitated, with his hand, the action of a person filling his glass.
"And you are here to keep him sober, eh?"
Wylie nodded.
"Then why do you ply him with liquor?"
"I don't, sir."
"You do. I have seen you do it a dozen times. And last night you took rum into his room, and made him so drunk, he would have died where he lay if I had not loosed his handkerchief."
"I am sorry to hear that, sir; but he was sober when I left him. The fool must have got to the bottle the moment I was gone."
"But that bottle you put in his way; I saw you. And what was your object? To deaden his conscience with liquor, his and your own, while you made him your fiendish proposal. Man, man, do you believe in God, and in a judgment to come for the deeds done in the body, that you can plan in cold blood to destroy a vessel with nineteen souls on board, besides the live stock, the innocent animals that God pitied and spared when he raised his hand in wrath over Nineveh of old?"