As luck would have it, they were both for Bombay again, only to give Spiller a chance of getting there first, the Simoom was to call at the Cape. Just before the Palembang cleared, Banks and Spiller fell up against each other on the landing stage, and as Spiller was full up to his back-teeth and uvula, he broke silence and went for the upholder of the vigia in high style. He could have taken a first-class in bad language at any Australian back-blocks academy of cursing—and what they don't know in blasphemy there can only be learnt from a low-class Spaniard. So the air was blue from Liverpool to Manchester, and to the Isle of Man, and Banks got up and left. For when he was ashore he was very religious. Even at sea he carried a prayer-book and an odd volume of virulent sermons, of the kind which indicate that no man need forgive any enemy who is not of the same persuasion. But to tell the truth, Banks could have forgiven anything but an insult to his beloved rocks.
"Such a man oughtn't to live," he cried angrily, as he went off in a tremulous rage. "He's predestined to the pit!"
And he trusted that Providence might one day yield him a chance of getting even. His prayers were fervent towards that end, and if Providence works, as it sometimes appears to do, through rum and ignorance and a good conceit in a man, there was a chance of his appeals being attended to.
On the passage out to the Cape they saw nothing of the Palembang. But there she was heard of as having being seen somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Agulhas Bank, having a real good time in that native home of the god of the winds, where fifty per cent. of all the breezes that do blow are gales that dance in and out and about like a cooper round a cask.
But the Simoom had luck, and slipped through as if Æolus never spotted her. And old Banks chortled happily, and sang an extra hymn on Sunday, compensating the men (otherwise disposed to growl at the innovation) with an extra lot of grog. For your true sailorman is the real conservative, and things that don't happen in the first week of a new ship have no business to happen afterwards—which is a hint some young second mates may find handy to remember. And remembering this will enable you to see why no true old shellback will ship in a steamboat, any more than the guard of a coach would let himself to any beastly new railroad.
The south-west monsoon had backed down to the Line about the time they crossed it; and the Simoom sweated up to the Maldivhs very comfortably.
"We've made a good passage—a ripping good passage," said old Banks, rubbing his hands, "and I'm condemned if I don't shape a course for my rocks, Mr. Green."
As he had been shaping for them ever since he had deliberately gone out of his way to take the route east of Madagascar, instead of the Inner or Mozambique route, Green winked the other eye and said nothing. To tell the truth, he himself had a hankering to set his mind at rest on the subject, for he felt his credit involved with the skipper's.
The man at the wheel overheard what Banks said, and when he stumped for'ard the whole crew knew that the Simoom was looking for a needle in the Indian Ocean.
"A life's job, my bullies," said their informant. "We'll be like the crew of the Flying Dutchman yet."