For some reason or other I forgot to do so, but, after lunch that morning, the younger people in the mess spread him out on the sofa, very gently, and sat on him. I happened to go into the ward room at the moment, and found eight of them and Old Bax in a heap, with bits of the young idiot showing out here and there under them, and heard them sing out, "Here's another dear brother," as they bumped him and he gasped for breath, and implored them to leave off. I slipped back to my cabin, and, as I expected, there was a knock at my door a few minutes afterwards, and in he came, very dishevelled, and complained of the indignity.
"You surprise me, Padré," I told him. "I can only say that I happened to go to the mess, and saw you 'scrapping' with your brother officers in the most unbecoming manner, and endeavouring, as far as I could make out, to break up the mess furniture. I trust that such conduct will not occur again."
He got very red and confused, and was going away, when I called him back: "Of course, Padré, you must remember that if they do dislike any of your expressions, you often enough complain of some of theirs, and I should advise you to humour them. It's often a great effort on their part to humour you, and you should be proud that they do try. I will speak to them, but strongly advise you to drop the 'dear brother' part of the show."
I'm glad to say that he did, and eventually became quite proud of relating the bumping incident as "a stepping-stone in my education for a life so strange, and at one period so apparently uncongenial, ah!"
As a matter of fact, he was always called "dear brother" after that, so never had the chance to forget it. To come back to my yarn, the absence of three watch-keepers and so many petty officers and men, to say nothing of the midshipmen, made it difficult enough to carry on the ordinary work of the ship. This was a constant source of irritation to Lawrence, Whitmore, and myself, and above all, there was the added overwhelming anxiety at the fate of Travers, Sally, and her father. It was now five weeks since they had disappeared, and I assure you that these weeks had only increased our anxiety and the feeling of utter helplessness at our inability to discover their whereabouts and rescue them. Somewhere, but whether north, south, east, or west, we had not the faintest notion, they were waiting for a sign of our coming, and every evening, as the sun set and the dark clouds and grey twilight shut out the islands all round us and wrapped them in darkness, the feeling of depression used to become still more acute, and we used to imagine them beginning another dreary night of waiting, and longing, and praying that the morning would bring them rescue, which we all knew it wouldn't. These things, and the want of exercise on shore, were excuses sufficient to account for any irritability of temper.
The Skipper used to tramp the quarterdeck from after "evening quarters" till sunset, but then the sight of the long skeins of ducks, geese, and swans flighting across the harbour to the mud flats round some of the smaller islands used to drive him down below. He used to growl: "Umph! That's what 'Old Lest' came down here to do, to shoot 'em, and he's only made a fool of himself so far. Umph!" and he'd send "Willum" round for three of us to go aft to make up a rubber of whist.
But at last the long period of inaction came to an end. One morning, just a week after the Ringdove and her two junks had left, I had turned out with the hands, and was walking up and down till my servant had made my morning cup of tea, the quarterdeck men scrubbing and holystoning round me in the dismal light.
I noticed a little native sailing boat beating up to Tinghai, and I remember that I thought it strange for so small a boat to have been out at night time. As it came towards the harbour, I watched it idly through my telescope, and presently saw that there were three men in it—a Chinaman steering and two people pulling lee oars, one a Chinaman and—I looked again to make sure—the other a tall gaunt fellow with a shaggy black beard. "That's a rum go," I thought, and was still more surprised when I saw them lower the sail—they were directly to leeward of us—and begin to pull straight towards the Vigilant.
"What on earth's going to happen now?" I thought, as the boat crept alongside, the men pulling very feebly. The gaunt European half crawled up the ladder and advanced towards me, and for a moment I did not recognize him.
"Hoffman!" he said.