“I have already expressed my opinion of your course,” said Forbush, frigidly.
“I know what I am about,” blustered the captain.
“You have said that before. I can only repeat that I am glad of it.”
“Perhaps you mean to dispute my authority,” said the captain, in a quarrelsome tone.
“Wait till I do, sir.”
Captain Richmond swore softly to himself, and eyed the mate with a glance far from friendly.
So the day passed, and another dawned.
Captain Richmond was unusually irritable. He saw that all on board looked at him askance. The sailors obeyed him, so that he had no excuse for complaint, but there was an utter absence of cordiality, and he was in the position of a social outcast who is “sent to Coventry.”
This is not a pleasant position for anyone, least of all for an arrogant and ill-tempered man like Captain Richmond. While it cannot be said that he regretted his inhuman conduct, he was angry at the unpopularity he had acquired through it.
Besides, he could not doubt that it would be reported at Bombay, and the matter perhaps brought to the attention of the American consul. Whenever he thought of this he felt vaguely uncomfortable, but he was too self-willed to retrace his course and thus admit himself to be in the wrong.