“Parallel lines never meet,” replied Jack, producing Hamilton Moore.
Whereupon Jack and the gunner argued the point, until it was agreed to refer the case to Mr Jolliffe, who asserted, with a smile, that those lines were parallels and not parallels.
As both were right, both were satisfied.
It was fortunate that Jack would argue in this instance: had he believed all the confused assertions of the gunner, he would have been as puzzled as the gunner himself. They never met without an argument and a reference, and as Jack was put right in the end, he only learned the faster. By the time that he did know something about navigation he discovered that his antagonist knew nothing. Before they arrived at Malta Jack could fudge a day’s work.
But at Malta Jack got into another scrape. Although Mr Smallsole could not injure him, he was still Jack’s enemy; the more so as Jack had become very popular: Vigors also submitted, planning revenge; but the parties in this instance were the boatswain and purser’s steward. Jack still continued his forecastle conversation with Mesty; and the boatswain and purser’s steward, probably from their respective ill-will towards our hero, had become great allies. Mr Easthupp now put on his best jacket to walk the dog-watches with Mr Biggs, and they took every opportunity to talk at our hero.
“It’s my peculiar hopinion,” said Mr Easthupp, one evening, pulling at the frill of his shirt, “that a gentleman should behave as a gentleman, and that if a gentleman professes hopinions of hequality and such liberal sentiments, that he is bound as a gentlemen to hact up to them.”
“Very true, Mr Easthupp; he is bound to act up to them; and not because a person, who was a gentleman as well as himself, happens not to be on the quarter-deck, to insult him because he only has perfessed opinions like his own.”
Hereupon Mr Biggs struck his rattan against the funnel, and looked at our hero.
“Yes,” continued the purser’s steward, “I should like to see the fellow who would have done so on shore however, the time will come when I can hagain pull on my plain coat, and then the insult shall be vashed out in blood, Mr Biggs.”
“And I’ll be cursed if I don’t some day teach a lesson to the blackguard who stole my trousers.”