CHAPTER XXV
THE EDUCATION OF THE SKIPPER
In spite of the gravity of his position, a smile broke over Mr. Court’s rugged face as he realised the situation. All unversed in any Machiavellian arts of diplomacy, he had unwittingly, by straightforward conduct, driven a wedge into the base of the vile edifice so laboriously reared by his commander. For it was impossible for him to help seeing how deep was Manuel’s resentment at the treatment meted out to him by the Captain, although the reason for the outburst was entirely hidden from the mate. He was seriously troubled in his mind, though, about Priscilla. How to proceed in order to save her from another painful illness he did not know. For he felt that, though he could and would dare a good deal now to keep the ship from becoming a den of wild beasts as far as the crew was concerned, interference between the skipper and his wife was quite another matter.
Yet, could he see her die? For that sad event seemed to him entirely probable within the next few days. She looked so frail, almost transparent, wax-like, in her perfect colourlessness of skin from her long seclusion, and, which alarmed him most,—there was a vacant, far-away look in her eyes that was most uncanny to him. He discussed the situation at great length with the second mate, who was fast recovering from the morbid condition of mind into which he had been thrown by the continued success of the skipper. But discuss as they might there seemed no solution of this difficult problem—indeed, as they vividly remembered, the chief difficulty was Priscilla herself, who, loyal to the core, would not, whatever her sufferings, do or say anything which might in her estimation weaken her husband’s authority.
So, with a heavy sigh, the two good fellows would close their conference and part, the one to his dreamless bunk, the other to his four hours’ tramp up and down the small area of the Grampus’s quarter-deck, revolving, almost maddeningly, all sorts of schemes for a further amelioration of the present conditions.
I fear that many ship officers, whether of merchant ships, whaleships, or men-of-war, deliberately cultivate a kind of stultification of the mental faculties while on watch. The mechanical side of the brain previously spoken of will go on doing its part no matter how dense have become the thinking processes. But that any intelligent man should set himself to become a Peter Bell, who ‘whistled as he went for want of thought,’ is akin to the idea of a man who should hermetically seal up his nostrils so that he should not smell, or render himself colour-blind so that pictures should not appeal to him, or cultivate stone-deafness in order not to enjoy harmony. It is true that to a highly sensitive, overstrung organisation such an ordeal as a cruise in a whaler must be a terrible one. For there are no inducements to ‘get there.’
‘Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.’