He disappeared, but returned, after an interval of a minute or two, and handed me a note scrawled on a small slip of paper. It was written in English, and read as follows—
“You are the last fellow I should ever have suspected of so contemptible a weakness as sulking. Come below, like a sensible lad; I have that to say to you which I do not choose to say on deck in the presence of the men.
“Mendouca.”
“Oh!” thought I, “so he has returned to his right mind, has he? Very well, I will go below and hear what he has to say; for it would certainly be unpleasant to be in a ship for any length of time with the captain of which one is not on speaking terms.”
Accordingly I descended the companion, and as I entered the cabin Mendouca rose from a sofa-locker upon which he had flung himself, and again stretched forth his hand.
“I want you to forgive me, Dugdale,” said he, with great earnestness. “Nay, but you must; I will take no denial. I am not prone to feel ashamed of anything that I do, but I frankly confess that I am ashamed of my behaviour to you this afternoon, and I ask your pardon for it. To tell you the whole truth, I believe that there is a taint of madness in my blood, for there have been occasions when I have felt myself irresistibly impelled to actions for which I have afterwards been sorry, and that of this afternoon was one of them.”
I believed him; I really believed that, as he had said, there was a touch of madness in his composition, and that he was not always fully accountable for his actions. I therefore somewhat reluctantly accepted his proffered hand and the reconciliation that went with it, and with a suggestion that perhaps it would be as well henceforth to avoid theological arguments, took my accustomed seat at the cabin table.
Later in the evening, while Mendouca was reading in his cabin, my friend Pedro joined me on deck, and, with many expressions of poignant distress at his father’s behaviour to me, endeavoured to excuse it upon the plea of irresponsibility already urged by Mendouca himself; the poor lad assuring me that even he was not always safe from the consequences of his father’s violence. And during the half-hour’s chat that ensued I learnt enough to convince me that Mendouca was in very truth afflicted with paroxysmal attacks of genuine, undoubted madness; and that, in my future dealings with him, I should have to bear that exceedingly alarming and disconcerting fact in mind.