“And if you’ve got to try to make me look like a damned fool, Melville, with your jokes about nakedness and that my instruments are not worth two cents, wait till I’m off the ship!”
Slam! went the door, closing off our meteorologist, whom I had never even thought of in connection with my dream, from my sight. I sank back into my chair with a deep sigh. I couldn’t even relate an innocent dream without offending the touchy Collins.
However, that was not the end of it, though I had hoped it was. The day itself wore along like all our other days, an utter blank, till about ten p.m., when with all hands about ready to turn in, the captain in his cabin sent for Collins, and as luck would have it, asked him, of all things, to bring a thermometer!
Collins went to fetch the thermometer, some special one, and took it into the cabin. There was some conversation about thermometers which, the skipper’s door being open, was faintly audible to us in the wardroom, but to which I paid little attention, till, the subject of thermometers evidently being now a raw one with Collins, I heard him say in a loud voice,
“Captain, I wish the officers would treat me with the same courtesy I try to treat them.”
At that I pricked up my ears.
“What’s the matter with you?” demanded De Long quickly. “If you have any particular charge to make against any officer, make it right now and I’ll investigate it.”
That was the last I heard, for the captain immediately closed his door, wanting privacy of course for such a discussion.
“Well, here’s where I have to explain even my dreams,” I thought to myself as I rolled into my bunk. “What a life!” Still, I managed to sleep that night with no more nightmares about thermometers to disturb me, and I woke in the morning quite refreshed. Nothing happened during breakfast either, and I was beginning to think that perhaps Collins was more of a man after all than the night before I had given him credit for being, when a little after eleven, while out on the ice for my regulation exercise, De Long hailed me,
“Come here, Melville. I want to see you.”