Captain. Then it did some good. The dirty brutes.
Mate. Heard the men grumbling to-night. Said we’ll never get the hawsers to run out with them bugs in the hawse pipes. Say the bugs don’t belong to them, sir—ship’s property.
Doctor. Any this end of the ship, captain? Good Lord!
Captain. Not a bug. And if there’s any for’ard the men brought ’em. No bugs in my ship. Never saw one in my cabin.
Mate (making a confused effort to master his emotion, not to spill his soup, and to be respectful). Te-he! you will, sir, Te-he! (Realises he may not laugh, but suffers internally.)
Captain (indicates an interrogation with frightful eyes and guttural noises).
Mate (controls himself by concentrating on a fork). Well, sir—I’m just telling you—I heard it said the men annoyed with bugs—some of ’em said seein’s believin’—said they had enough for everybody. (His voice breaks into a stifled falsetto) So they emptied a match—match—they emptied a match box full down your ventilator this morning.
The captain would frequently keep his seat in the saloon after dinner till he had finished his cigar, and in the vein, would put a leg over the arm of his chair, which he had pushed back (his chair was cushioned, and was not a fixture), and frowning at his cigar, as if for defects, would voyage again his early seas. I suppose a sailor would call our skipper a hard case. He was an elderly man, tall, spare, and meagrely bearded. His eyes were set close into a knife-like nose, and they were opaque and bright, like two blue stones under a forehead which narrowed and tightened into a small shiny cranium. There were tufts of grey wool above his temples. No light came through his eyes to make them limpid, except when he was fondling Tinker, the dog. They shone from the surface, giving him a look of peering and intent suspicion. The skin of his face, neck and hands, now worked a little loose, was so steeped in the tincture of sunshine that it had preserved an unctious child-like quality. His dress and habits betrayed an appreciation of his own person. He kept his own medicines.
I guessed he would have a ruthless process in an emergency; he would identify the success and safety of the ship with his own. He laughed from his mouth only, throwing his head back, showing surprisingly perfect teeth, and laughter did not change the crystalline glitter of his eyes. There was something alien and startling in his merriment. As though his own mind were too cold for him at times he would seek out me, or the chief, to find warmth in an argument. He would irritate us into a disputation; and though he was a choleric man, quick at opposition, yet his vocabulary then was flinty and sparse. It stuck, and was delivered with pain. You could think of him labouring at his views of men and affairs with a creaking slate pencil. He set one’s teeth. But he was a sailor, cautious and bold, with a knowledge of ships and the sea that was a mine to me. Let me say that, during the voyage, I found him busy making a canvas cot. He sat on the poop and worked there, bent and patient as a seamstress, for days. With a judgment made too readily I believed he was, naturally, making it for his own comfort, against the heat of the river. When it was finished he was rolling up his ball of yarn, surveying his job, and he said, mumbling and shy, that the cot was for me.