“But what’s bothering you anyway, brother? What’s this trap you’re so excited about?”
“Don’t you see it, chief? It’s plain enough. I’m only a common seaman here. In the captain’s power! And now to humiliate me, he’s forbidden me to leave the ship without begging his permission!”
I stared at Collins incredulously. Was that all? If it had not been for his overwrought features, I could have laughed in his face.
“Don’t be so damned morbid, Collins,” I replied as gently as I could. “About that seaman business, you’re as much an officer aboard this ship as I am, regardless of how the law required them to put you down on the ship’s articles. Don’t you live in the cabin, mess with the officers, muster with the officers? What more do you want? Some gold lace on your sleeves? But even if you rated it, what good would it do you? Not one of us wears it here. As for the captain’s order, it hits me and every other officer and man aboard as much as it does you. It’s just part of the ship’s discipline.”
“Ship’s discipline! Oh, no! That order’s aimed at me, personally! To make me beg for every little right. To take away my liberty. Because he fooled me into signing on as a seaman, the captain thinks now he can take away my rights. But I’ll show him! He can’t persecute me!”
Here was a damned mess. Hardly ten days in the ice and our meteorologist already talking insanely about persecution. He had the civilian’s foolish idea that aboard ship by some hocus-pocus an officer was a god, a passenger a free agent, and a seaman but a slave. Didn’t he realize by now that in the Navy every man aboard ship was equally subject to the captain’s authority; that in the hands of a tyrannical captain, an officer’s stripes afforded no protection from abuse? That if the captain really wished to humiliate and persecute him, a commission as an officer could not possibly save him? I tried to calm Collins’ fears.
“That order’s innocent enough, Collins, and it’s meant for all hands. The skipper’d probably forgotten all about you when he wrote it out.”
“Oh, no, he didn’t! It’s aimed at me, all right. But I’ll fool him!” Collins’ eyes positively glittered with rage. “Try to make me beg his permission, huh? I’ll start a silent protest by staying aboard. Before I ask De Long’s permission to leave, I’ll not go off this ship again even if I die for it!”
I gazed at Collins in perplexity. An impulsive Irishman if there ever was one, going off half cocked over a perfectly innocent order. What ailed the man? Did he think the captain was jealous of his professional attainments; was he afraid the captain meant to prevent him or anyone else aboard from reaping what glory he might from the success of our expedition? That outburst about being called an accessory—what suppressed emotions did that reveal? Was Collins such an idiot as to think that De Long after years of fighting and sweating to make this expedition a reality, was now going to act merely as sailing master on his own ship, putting aside his own dreams and ambitions of discovery in favor of a minor assistant of whose very existence he had been ignorant till a few short months before? I would never have believed such egotism possible, but as I looked into Collins’ distorted face, I began to wonder. However, so far as I was concerned, that was neither here nor there. We were going to have a long time in the ice yet together, and if life was to continue reasonably pleasant in the imprisoned Jeannette’s cabin, Collins must not make a fool of himself.
“Come now, Collins,” I begged persuasively, “think it over, and you’ll see what I tell you is so—the order’s reasonable enough. But even if it weren’t, you’d only make a bad matter worse by your ‘silent protest.’ I wouldn’t do that. It bears on me the same as it does on you. Now I’m an officer of twenty-three years seniority, which is more than De Long has, and were we both on board a frigate I’d be very much Mr. De Long’s senior. But here on the Jeannette he’s captain and my superior, so I don’t feel it bears on me at all that I have to ask his permission to come or go—it’s only a custom of the Service. And there’s the skipper now,” I added as De Long appeared on deck from the poop and stood blinking a moment in the glare from the ice. “Think it over!”