“Mr Davis!” cried the captain sternly. “What is the matter?”
The second mate scrambled to his feet, but he could not hold himself steady and he only muttered some utterly incomprehensible words, his power of speech vanishing with his equilibrium.
“I dunno, canshay,” he murmured helplessly.
“Faugh!” exclaimed Captain Miles in accents of the deepest disgust. “The man is dead drunk. Take him away at once to the fo’c’s’le some of you. He doesn’t come into my cabin again if I know it!”
Chapter Eleven.
Bad Weather.
Later on in the afternoon, some couple of hours or so after he had been carried into the forecastle, Davis, sobered down by his rest, came aft again. He did not, however, enter the cabin or go up on the poop, but remained hanging about the waist, as if uncertain what to do, evidently “smelling a rat,” as the saying goes.
Captain Miles was prepared for this, Moggridge, the boatswain, who had made many voyages with him, and in whom he placed implicit trust, having related all that had occurred; so, although he saw Davis approach, he waited a while till the watch was relieved, when, advancing to the break of the poop, he hailed the whilom second mate below.