Captain Turnbull rose slowly to his feet, and, advancing to where the mate stood near the main-rigging, tapped that individual softly on the shoulder with his pipe-stem.
The mate turned round.
Captain Turnbull looked fixedly at him for some moments as though he thought he recognised him, but was not quite sure, and then observed—
“I say, are you the cap’n of this ship?”
“No, sir,” replied the mate.
“Very well, then,” retorted the skipper, “don’t you do it agen.” Then to the crew, all of whom were by this time on deck, “Bowse down yer reef-tackles and double-reef the taups’ls, then stow the mains’l.”
“Don’t you think we’d better run back to the Tyne, afore we drops too far to leeward to fetch it?” inquired the mate.
The captain looked at him in his characteristic fashion for a full minute; inquired, “Are you the cap’n of this ship?”
And then, without waiting for a reply, replaced his pipe between his lips, staggered back to his seat, and contemplatively resumed his smoking.
The fact is that Captain Turnbull was actually pondering upon the advisability of putting back when the mate unluckily suggested the adoption of such a course. Dull and inert as was the skipper of the Betsy Jane, he was by no means an unskilled seaman. The fact that he had safely navigated the crazy old craft to and fro between the Thames and the Tyne, in fair weather and foul, for so many years, was sufficient evidence of this. He had duly marked the portentous aspect of the weather, and was debating within himself the question whether he should put back, or whether he should keep on and take his chance of weathering the gale, as he had already weathered many others. Unfortunately his mind was, like himself, rather heavy and slow in action, and he had not nearly completed the process of “making it up” when the mate offered his suggestion. That settled the question at once. The “captain” was as obstinate and unmanageable a man as ever breathed, and it was only necessary for some one to suggest a course and he would at once adopt a line of action in direct opposition to it. Hence his resolve to remain at sea in the present instance.