Banks fumed.
"Lucky you didn't run the Palembang on my imagination. Slow as she goes, she'd have slammed herself into matchwood."
Spiller choked with rage.
"Look here, I'll sail all over your blooming rocks, as I have done afore. You just made this up to get notoriety, and have your ship's name on the chart, and be put in the Directory. I know you, Banks, and I don't think much of you, and never did. To get yourself talked about you'd report that you'd seen the Flying Dutchman. Vigias, indeed! A disfigurement on any chart! You'll have the chart of the Indian Ocean as big a disgrace as the North Atlantic if you have your way. Didn't you find nothing new to report this time?"
Banks rose up in a towering rage.
"You're no gentleman, Captain Spiller, and I'll speak no more with you, not till you own that the Simoom Rocks are real. And may you never have occasion to rue finding them out as such. I'll let you know I've as great a respect for the chart as you have, and if you ever run your old tub on my rocks, you can call 'em Spiller's Reef, for all I care, so there," and he perspired off to his vessel.
In shipping circles opinion was divided between the master of the Simoom and the master of the Palembang. And it being the fashion of the sailorman, or, for that matter, of human-kind in general, to decide matters that admit of doubt according to personal prejudice and ancient opinion, there were more on Spiller's side than on Banks's. For one thing, it is the perpetual ambition of all true sons of the ocean to discover something new and have his ship's name tagged on to it, and every one was jealous of Banks. When the Amphion looked for the rocks without success, they threw out dark hints about a dead whale or a tree stump having been seen, and some said "Rum," just as others said "Rats," contemptuously.
Others, with a very fine contempt for the Navy, were of opinion that Captain Melville of H.M.S. Amphion considered he owned half the Indian Ocean and all the Arabian Sea, and would be as much put out at finding an unmarked rock or shoal in either as if he slipped upon an old chew on his own quarterdeck. These were on Banks's side, of course. And some who disliked Spiller said they believed in this new set of rocks to annoy him, ending very naturally in holding the opinion they argued for.
When old Banks got on the high horse and swore he would not speak again to the disbeliever in the vigia, he meant it, and added details to his statement.
"Not if I found him in a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean," he swore excitedly.