They looked round them. The skylight of the captain’s fore cabin was open a couple of inches, and through the gap the captain was looking at them; they could see his eyes and his nose. He was a tall man and by standing on anything low, a book or a footstool, he could look from under the skylight over the coaming. Rigid, the officers waited while another pair of eyes appeared under the skylight beside the captain’s. They belonged to Hobbs, the actinggunner.
“Wait there until I come to you, gentlemen,” said the captain, with a sneer as he said the word ‘gentlemen’. “Very good, Mr. Hobbs.”
The two faces vanished from under the skylight, and the officers had hardly time to exchange despairing glances before the captain came striding up the ladder to them.
“A mutinous assembly, I believe,” he said.
“No, sir,” replied Buckland. Any word that was not a denial would be an admission of guilt, on a charge that could put a rope round his neck.
“Do you give me the lie on my own quarterdeck?” roared the captain. “I was right in suspecting my officers. Plotting. Whispering. Scheming. Planning. And now treating me with gross disrespect. I’ll see that you regret this from this minute, Mr. Buckland.”
“I intended no disrespect, sir,” protested Buckland.
“You give me the lie again to my face! And you others stand by and abet him! You keep him in countenance! I thought better of you, Mr. Bush, until now.”
Bush thought it wise to say nothing.
“Dumb insolence, eh?” said the captain. “Eager enough to talk when you think my eye isn’t on you, all the same.”