“Did you notice the captain then, Mr. Powell. Did you notice?”
Powell confessed frankly that he was too scared himself when all that lot of gear came down on deck to notice anything.
“The gin-block missed his head by an inch,” went on the mate impressively. “I wasn’t three feet from him. And what did he do? Did he shout, or jump, or even look aloft to see if the yard wasn’t coming down too about our ears in a dozen pieces? It’s a marvel it didn’t. No, he just stopped short—no wonder; he must have felt the wind of that iron gin-block on his face—looked down at it, there, lying close to his foot—and went on again. I believe he didn’t even blink. It isn’t natural. The man is stupefied.”
He sighed ridiculously and Mr. Powell had suppressed a grin, when the mate added as if he couldn’t contain himself:
“He will be taking to drink next. Mark my words. That’s the next thing.”
Mr. Powell was disgusted.
“You are so fond of the captain and yet you don’t seem to care what you say about him. I haven’t been with him for seven years, but I know he isn’t the sort of man that takes to drink. And then—why the devil should he?”
“Why the devil, you ask. Devil—eh? Well, no man is safe from the devil—and that’s answer enough for you,” wheezed Mr. Franklin not unkindly. “There was a time, a long time ago, when I nearly took to drink myself. What do you say to that?”
Mr. Powell expressed a polite incredulity. The thick, congested mate seemed on the point of bursting with despondency. “That was bad example though. I was young and fell into dangerous company, made a fool of myself—yes, as true as you see me sitting here. Drank to forget. Thought it a great dodge.”
Powell looked at the grotesque Franklin with awakened interest and with that half-amused sympathy with which we receive unprovoked confidences from men with whom we have no sort of affinity. And at the same time he began to look upon him more seriously. Experience has its prestige. And the mate continued: