"Oh," said I, "then you can tell us all where we are bound for, for no one seems to know."
He considered a little. "I shall be able to tell you shortly, I have no doubt," he said at last. "At present Mr. Morland alone knows. Perhaps even he doesn't," he added with his smile.
"I don't like that little buffer," declared Lane grumpily as we walked on. "He is too fussy and by-your-leave-please for me. Made me get out all my books yesterday, as if I were an office-boy."
"He feels responsible, I suppose," I ventured.
"Well, who's responsible if I'm not?" demanded the purser hotly. "I've been at sea fifteen years, and this brat hasn't so much as been sick in the Marguerite, I'll lay. Let him look after his own books. I'm all right."
It was quite manifest that Lane was decided in his likes and dislikes, as his unreasonable objection to the second officer had already discovered to me. The passengers were not visible during the morning, but in the afternoon I received a message calling me to Mr. Morland's cabin. I found him seated before a bureau with a docket of papers before him, and he was civil and abrupt.
"Is there anything you can recommend for sea-sickness, Dr. Phillimore?" he asked bluntly.
I told him of several remedies which had been tried, and mentioned cocaine as probably the best, adding that I had little faith in any of them. He thought a moment.
"Prepare me some cocaine," he said, and with a bow intimated that he had done with me.
It was civil as I have said, but it was also abrupt. He had the air of a martinet and the expression of a schoolmaster who set his pupil a task. But I made up the doses forthwith and let him have them.