Captain Nelson seemed to have got through with the Annie Battles. He stood gazing absently at the great, smooth swells rolling up on our starboard quarter, looked off at the horizon, as if he could see beyond it, and sniffed the air like a dog. At last he turned to Mr. Baker.
“I don’t like the look of these seas,” he said. “The glass has n’t begun to fall yet, but it will. Make the course southeast, Mr. Baker. We ’ll get out of this.”
“As to these seas, Tim, here, says they breathe. He hears ’em.”
Captain Nelson glanced at me with a smile. “Does he? Well, so they do, Tim. Could n’t Mr. Baker hear it?”
“I don’t know, sir. He did n’t seem to, and I was n’t very sure of it, but it seemed as if I did.”
“Be sure of what you see and hear, Tim,” said the captain kindly. “You ’re as likely to be right as another, as far as the evidence of your senses goes. It ’s only in accounting for facts that a man of knowledge and experience has the better of you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Baker was giving orders that would bring the ship on her new course, and she soon began to wear slowly, for the gentle breath of air was from the southwest. We passed astern of the Annie Battles, which had got pretty far ahead by that time, but I could see that the men on her deck were surprised at our change of course. Captain Nelson was watching her, and presently a man came up her companionway, and stood on her deck looking at us. He was a large man, much larger than Captain Nelson. I could see nothing more than that and that he was active enough to be a young man. He raised his hand, but I could not tell whether he was shaking his fist or merely waving his hand in salutation. Captain Nelson chuckled and waved his hand.
The Battles was jibing, and she was coming after us. Captain Nelson did not wait, but after giving another long look around, he went below. I followed, and pestered him, for I wanted to know what it was that he expected, and why he expected it. Of course I had no business to bother him about such matters at all, and he would have been quite right to tell me shortly to shut up, and many masters would. Captain Nelson never did that if he believed that I was thirsting for information which it was quite proper for me to have. This occasion was no exception, and he went to considerable pains to explain what he could, and what I could digest, about tropical hurricanes, which are most common about that season, especially just about the place where we were. It was all intensely interesting to me, and I listened in complete absorption, managing to remember most of what he told me.
At that time there was a less general understanding of the fundamental principles of weather, even among good seamen, than there is now. For my own part, it has always been difficult for me to remember instructions when they had to be memorized; but when I once have mastered principles my troubles are over. I do not have to search the stores of memory for a formula which fits the occasion, like a formula in chemistry, and I rarely go astray.