“You trapped? What’s ailing you, Collins?” I asked, astonished at this hysterical outburst. “We’re all trapped with the Jeannette in the ice, but you’re no worse off than I am.”
“It’s not the ice, chief!” Collins gripped my arm, drew me close to the rail. “It’s the captain! I’ve been fearing this for weeks. You’re all right, you’re an officer. But I was fooled into shipping as a seaman! Now the captain’s got me where he wants me. Look at that!” He reached inside his parka. I looked. “That” was a somewhat faded newspaper clipping of an interview De Long had given a reporter from the Washington Post, an interview which months before I had once seen reprinted in a San Francisco newspaper.
“That’s where it started; look what De Long called me there!” With a shaking finger Collins pointed to the middle of the clipping, in a voice quivering with emotion, read an extract,
“‘It may be that some specialists or scientists will be invited or permitted to accompany us, but they will be simply accessories.’
“See that? Accessories!” Collins’ voice choked. “He’s labeled me as simply an accessory, Melville! I should have quit as my brother advised me when I first saw that interview, not gone and shoved my head into a trap by signing as a seaman!”
I looked at him curiously. Undoubtedly the man was overwrought, seething with suppressed passion which something had finally touched off. I tried to calm him.
“Now see here, Collins, what are you taking offense at? What’s so bad about your being an accessory to the Navy in this scientific stuff? You don’t think, do you, that in this expedition De Long and the whole Navy should be accessories to you?”
But Collins, boiling inwardly, did not even hear me. He seized my arm again, continued vehemently,
“And now he’s sprung his trap. That order he just sent me to sign! And to show what he thinks of me, he picks his Chinaman to order me to sign it! I’m in his power, on the books as just a seaman! Fool! If I’d had a grain of sense, I shouldn’t have come except as an officer or at least as a passenger!”
Collins was certainly beside himself. I looked swiftly round, fearing he would make himself ridiculous before the crew, but fortunately they were all still below, lingering over their Sunday dinner. I turned back to Collins.