"Who—who are you?" he said.
Mr. Simpson gasped.
"Who am I—oh, who am I? Well, I'll oblige you by statin' once for all that I'm mate of this ship, and you're my dog."
But the "dog" shook his head.
"Nothing of the sort," he said, as he staggered with the remains of the opiate. "I'm a British admiral, and my name's Sir Richard Dunn. Where's my ship?"
Any ordinary kind of back-answer or insubordination received only one kind of treatment on board the California, and when a man had been beaten to a jelly, he rarely recovered enough spirit to inquire why he had been hammered. But this was a new departure in back-talk.
"Oh, you're an admiral—an admiral, heh?" said Simpson.
"Of course," said Sir Richard, and a sudden gust of rage blew the last opium out of him. "Why, damn it, sir, what the devil do you mean by laying your filthy paws on me? Where's your captain, sir? By all that's holy, I'll smash you if you so much as look at me again."
Now it is a remarkable fact that the utterly and entirely unexpected will sometimes shake the courage of the stoutest heart. It is possible that a tiger would itself turn tail if a lamb rushed at him with open mouth. And though Mr. Simpson would have tackled a prize-fighter, knowing he was a prize-fighter, the fact that one of the kind of men whom he was accustomed to wipe his boots on now turned upon him with entirely strange language and a still stranger air of authority, for a moment daunted him utterly. He stood still and gasped, while the admiral strode aft and went up the poop ladder. He was met there by the captain, who had been the terror of the seas as a mate. A narrow escape of a conviction for murder had partially reformed him. He had also become religious, and usually went below when Simpson or the second "greaser" was hammering any one into oblivion and obedience.
"What is this?" asked Captain Blaker mildly, yet with a savage eye. "Mr. Simpson, what do you mean by allowing your authority (and mine delegated to you) to be disregarded?"