I had quickly picked up a handspike when I saw that I had missed my aim with the snatch-block, while my antagonist—who, to do him justice, had plenty of pluck, and had only been startled for the moment by the heavy missile hurtling through the air close to his projecting nose—was advancing to attack me again with his fists clenched, a savage look the while on his face, as if he meant to settle me this time; but, on this interruption from the skipper, we both relinquished our hostile attitudes, Mr Macdougall slinking towards the binnacle, as if innocently engaged in studying the bearings of the compass there, and I dropping the handspike incontinently.
There was a ringing tone of command in the skipper’s voice which meant that he intended to be obeyed; but mixed with this, beyond a slight suspicion of surprise at the unexpected scene which met his gaze, there was a good deal of subdued irritation, which really was not to be wondered at.
He had been having an afternoon nap in his cabin, which was situated immediately below the deck where the mate and I had been rehearsing the little drama I have just detailed; and the noise we had made with “the movements of the piece,” to speak theatrically, having very unceremoniously disturbed his slumbers before the period he generally allowed himself for his “forty winks” had expired, his temper was not sweetened thereby beforehand, only just needing the unseemly fracas which he noticed on coming on the poop to send it up to fever-heat.
I had never seen Captain Billings so angry since I had been on board the Esmeralda; his blue eyes fairly flashed forth fire!
He took no notice of me at first, advancing towards the chief mate.
“Mr Macdougall,” said he, sharply, “I call upon you for an explanation of this—this—discreditable affair!”
“Yon dratted loon, Capting, sought me life!” replied the other, glibly. “He hove a snatch-block at me, and takkin’ the pairt of my ain defeence I was gangin’ to poonish him a wee when ye came on deck.”
“And did you give him no occasion for behaving so insubordinately, sir?” asked the skipper, looking Mr Macdougall straight in the face with a piercing glance, as if defying him to answer him untruthfully.
But the mate was too old a hand at “spinning a yarn,” as sailors term dealing in fictitious statements. He could utter a falsehood without winking once!
“Nae, sir,” said he, as cool as a cucumber, making no reference to the fact of his having twice knocked me down before I retaliated on him, “I did naething to the loon, naething at a’! I only joost reprovit him a wee for his bad language and inseelance, ye ken, an’ he oops wi’ yon block an’ heaves at me puir head. It’s joost a marcy o’ Proveedence he did nae knockit me brains oot!”