“There’s a great deal too much lawlessness all along this coast, Mr. Harker, and it is all coming here from outside. Your Occidental is a quiet, hard-working man, or used to be, as I remember, but a breed of hard cases has got loose here out of some jail, or every jail in Europe by the look of them, and Las Palomas is not Occidental any longer. You couldn’t give the people liberty here, even on Sunday, not even just to go to the church ship and back. The place is a sink of iniquity. Mr. Hopkins, have you seen the Mission Church here? It is very remarkable; that is, it is said to be by those who know, for its paintings of the Last Judgment. I was thinking of sending you ashore this morning, to see them—since we are not to sail.”
“Thank you, sir; thank you very much, sir,” the second mate answered. The captain turned up his eyes as though he were watching a bird through the skylight: he reddened and gurgled in his throat.
Sard, who knew the symptoms, stole a glance at Pompey Hopkins, caught his eye and gave him the flutter of a smile. Pompey was another lad who had served all his seven years at sea under Captain Cary; he, too, was still a boy, in the captain’s eyes, to be guarded from the sins of a seaport town. Sard and he both saw the thought slowly crystallising in their captain’s mind:
“If I send this boy to one of these foreign churches, he may be caught by this foreign way of worship and fall into all kinds of sin: it is just devil-worship by what I understand of it. He had better stay on board and do some useful work.” In a few seconds the captain’s voice was heard again.
“I was thinking that, Mr. Hopkins; that I would send you ashore this morning; but I’m not at all satisfied with her trim. When we are riding light, as we shall be this time, I like her to be more by the head. I will just have a look-see, as the Chinese say, from the dinghy after breakfast, and if it’s as I think, Mr. Harker, you will have the people down and see if we can’t get her down more. She lies a much better course in a light wind when she is by the head.
“I think, too, Mr. Harker, that since we are so light, we’ll have the main-royal mast down on deck. And let the boys do it all, will you, with yourself and old Birkett. Since ships became big, they do not get the practice in these things which we used to have. I remember when people came down to the water-front to see a ship of seven hundred tons.”
“Yes, sir: do you indeed, sir?”
“Yes, sir, and ships of the line sent down top-gallant yards at dusk.”
Pompey Hopkins’ face expressed due wonder, with the inner reservation that “this kind of thing was the old man’s perk.”
“A little more kedgeree, Mr. Hopkins?”