The first-officer became inwardly alert as he said: "Well, Captain Kendrick is getting old, and he hasn't been right since he was smashed up so bad three years ago."
"How smashed?" asked Valentine eagerly.
"Got washed into the scuppers of the Juanita. They found him jammed under a boat with his timbers busted to smithereens. You may have noticed that he walks with a list to port."
"He didn't break his head, did he?" and Valentine tapped his forehead with a significant finger.
"Well, that's not for me to say," and Mr. Parlin hesitated, with a flutter of an eyelid; "but he has his hobby, and he sets all the sail it'll carry. You may have noticed it this morning. But he was going it very easy then."
"I'd have had my ship long before this," continued Mr. Parlin, "if the old man hadn't put a black mark on my record in the main office. Now that he talks of going out of the line, there's no harm in my sayin' that if I'd flopped on my knees and spouted psalms instead of sticking to my duties, it would be Captain Parlin by now. Excuse me. I have some work on."
Valentine said to himself as he watched the burly, bow-legged figure lumber toward a main-deck ladder:
"Now, there's a proper sailor for you! And this captain—pshaw, he makes me sick."
At the same time Mr. Parlin was thinking:
"Neatly done. I put a nail in the old cuss's coffin."