Captain Nichols was a good deal of a mystery to us forward. He seldom came on deck except for a few moments of a fine morning, when he would bob up, "take a sight" and stump deliberately down the companion to the chronometer, counting the seconds out loud on his way. At noon he "took the sun" alone in solitary scientific grandeur; only once do I remember seeing the mate take an observation. One noon, I was at the wheel at the time, our first officer came aft shortly before eight bells, carrying an ancient "hog yoke." His sleeves were rolled up, and a greasy shine on the arc of his instrument told of efforts at polishing. Somehow he could not get the sun to behave, for the curious relic seemed sadly in need of adjustment. He retired in disgust when the captain "made eight bells," and stumped forward without answering, when the skipper asked him what he had for altitude.
Tipping me the shadow of a wink, the captain went below to work up the position.
The captain on the other hand was quite regular in his methods of navigation. He watched the course closely, having a particularly fine tell-tale compass swung beneath the skylight in his private cabin, as every one of us had evidence by the uncanny way in which he would pop up out of the companion at the most unheard of hours of the night and walk quickly to the binnacle, and seldom except when the helmsman was off his course.
I met the captain a number of years afterward in Philadelphia. He was then in command of a fine steamer and I was second mate of another vessel of the same line. In the course of a pleasant visit talking over old times on the Fuller, I asked him how he managed to keep such close watch on the navigation of his ship without any particular assistance from his officers.
"By staying awake nights, sir," was his laconic reply.
At any rate, whatever his method, Captain Nichols knew pretty well where we were at all times.
On the old ships, and the Fuller was a very good example of her class, the master was housed in truly palatial style. On our ship the captain's quarters were spacious, taking up two-thirds of the cabin and running the whole width of the vessel, and fore and aft from the mizzen mast to the lazarette. The captain's stateroom was most commodious; he enjoyed the comfort of slumber in a large mahogany bunk built after the lines of a Dutch galiot, as broad as it was long. This room took up the space of three ordinary staterooms on the starboard quarter. At the foot of the companion was a cozy after cabin luxuriously paneled in mahogany between fluted columns of the same wood picked out with gold leaf at base and capital. Other rare woods of a lighter shade were inlaid on the center panels, and the whole furnishing of cushioned lockers, round table, and skylight, with its tell-tale compass, book and chart cases, gave it the air of a costly yacht cabin.
His bathroom, connected with a large salt-water tank, filled each morning by the deck washers, was on the port side, and two spare staterooms opened into the after cabin from port. A bulkhead divided these private quarters from the forward or mess cabin, off which were the pantry, storeroom, steward's room and slop chest. The mates were berthed in two staterooms on either side of the after cabin, but their doors opened into a sort of thwart ship vestibule running the width of the after cabin just below the break of the poop. The mizzen mast came down through the after end of the mess cabin, and a large brass lamp swung in gimbals just below the long skylight.
A repeating rifle in a rack above the captain's bunk, and two revolvers on each side of the chart table, composed the offensive battery. A long brass telescope reposed in a rack in the companion, and at the foot of this was slung a very good mercurial barometer. Typical of the best traditions of the sea, such were the quarters of the after guard.