He told the steward to bring him a cup of coffee, and having put on his pea-jacket, and lighted a pipe, he shook himself, and began pacing the quarterdeck at the windward side.
As his feet fell upon the planks, he thought, "My own! My own! The craft I've sailed these many years, the best years of my life, now is all mine, to do with as I please! And what shall I do with her? Sell her! Sell her, and put my little ones fair before the wind?"
"How does she answer now, Pritchard?" he asked the man at the wheel.
"Fast as a racer, sir," replied the man.
"That's right! That's right!" said the captain, rubbing his hands, and drawing his pipe heartily.
It was the rule of the yacht that the officer in charge, be he captain or mate, should not smoke. This was the captain's first infringement of the rule, but there were excuses for him. There was no likelihood that either the Duke or the Marquis would come on deck again that night; and in less than four-and-twenty hours the craft he commanded would be his own. He was now in the zenith of his fortune. All his worldly future was fairly provided for, and he was mapping it out with a loving hand.
He paused in his walk, and caught the bulwark, tried to shake it, that he might enjoy the consciousness of the vessel's--his vessel's--strength. He laid his hand on the mainboom, as one pats the head of a favourite child. He looked down the skylight, and saw the satin-wood panels, the silver fittings, the rich velvet curtains and upholstery.
Then he took up the lantern and directed the light from the bull's-eye on to the unshapely ragged rudder-head. The carpenter had not been able to drive all the wedges fully home, nor had he cut them off level with the rudder-cap. The clean newly-cut wedges, standing up in the rude oval formed by the line inside the cap-iron, looked like a double set of irregular teeth laid flat and open or dislocated. The upper surface of the rudder appeared lozenge-shaped, but only the outline of the iron was lozenge-shaped. The wood and the inner side formed an octagon, the sides of which were arcs of large circles, the plain being longer by one-third than broad. The irons, when they reached what may be termed the base or after-line of the octagon, increased greatly in thickness, and at the line of the base were pierced by an iron bolt which was riveted over a pair of washers, and this bolt formed the base-line of the ironwork aft. The iron sides of the octagon were continued aft, and brought together at a gentle angle, until they met the iron helm, to which they were firmly welded; the strength of this joint being enormously increased by a stout exterior ring clasping all three together, and welded to all three; following the helm-iron forward, between those two side bands over the bolt, through the rudder-head, it was finally riveted over a washer in the foremost iron side of the band.
The workmanship was excellent, and the whole looked as firm as human hands could make it.
The interior of the iron was an irregular octagon, the exterior was rounded and lozenge-shaped. The captain now, for the first time, noticed two things: namely, that the lozenge-shape, which looked so well, had been obtained at the expense of strength; and, that the helm-iron must be broken off short at the point where it entered the rudder-head. The exterior oval had been produced by thinning away the iron at points exterior to the interior angles. Unless the helm-iron had been broken, the cap-iron could not have worked so freely a while ago.