"A man may beat a man," he would grumble out, "but, d—— it, I don't like being thrashed by a woman. Mrs. Lyndsay, you have no right to beat a sailor on his own deck, at checkers."
The Captain was by no means a bad-hearted man; but he had many odd peculiarities. One of these was his insisting on keeping his pipe in the large, flat-bottomed, greasy candlestick. This afternoon he missed it from its usual place.
"Sam!" he thundered, in his stentorian voice—"Sam Fraser!—What the devil have you done with my pipe?"
"It's in the cupboard, Sir," said Sam, obsequiously.
"How dared you put it in the cupboard, when I had found out such a clean place for it?"
"Why, Sir,—I thought, Sir, the cupboard was the best place for it."
"You thought! Sir, you have no business to think, without I give you leave. If I had put it in the pitch-pot, you had no right to take it out, unordered by me!"
Sam bowed with the gravity of a judge, handing him the black, greasy pipe, with the deference due from a subject to his sovereign prince.
The Captain had lost his eye in a storm, in which his ship (not the Anne) had suffered wreck. He had effected his escape through the cabin-window, and a splinter of the glass had pierced his eye and destroyed his sight. This was one of the occasions in which he had been saved by the faithful Oscar, who kept him above water until a boat picked him up. The splinter of glass was afterwards extracted by the surgeon of a man-of-war; and Boreas kept it in a snuff-box, which he always carried about his person, and looked upon it in the light of a charm.
"While I can keep this and Oscar," he said, "I shall never suffer from shipwreck again."