Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/377

 to be brought to the course which she was steering when he was carried below."

"My compliments to Captain Punch," answered Mr. Wilson, "and tell him that he has given me charge of this vessel, and that I'm not going to learn navigation at my time of life from any man alive, be his name Parfitt, or be his name Punch, or be his name Judy, by thunder!"

This insolent speech reached the ears of Captain Punch, who was below in the cabin under the skylight, which lay wide open. The roar that followed was that of a bull. It was by no means inarticulate, however. The sea-words the old fellow employed were so much to the purpose that Mr. Wilson, going to the skylight, cried down: "It's all right, sir, it's all right, don't excite yourself," and he then audibly directed the man at the wheel to bring the ship to the course commanded by Captain Punch.

I was astonished to find Mr. Wilson acting in opposition to Captain Punch. He had shipped as Punch's first mate, and Punch was indisputably his chief, however Parfitt might have stood in this complicated business. But I speedily discovered that Mr. Wilson was an extraordinarily conceited and very bad-tempered man. He guessed that old Punch was not going to improve in health; and so, since Punch had made him master of the ship, he was clearly determined to remain master at all costs, in defiance even of Punch himself.

All three men had notions of their own as to the courses to be steered. One was always something to the eastward or something to the southward of the others. Captain Punch had a tell-tale compass in his cabin, and when he was too ill with the gout to be carried on deck he would send his servant to the man at the wheel with instructions to luff or to let her go off as it might happen. But these alterations in the direction pursued by the ship he was able to contrive to his own satisfaction only when the carpenter happened to have the watch, for if an order came from Punch when Captain Parfitt or Mr. Wilson was on deck it was instantly countermanded, with the result that when the captains met in the cabin they would quarrel wildly for an hour at a time, threatening one another with the law, sneering at one another's experiences, often clenching fists; indeed, and on more than one occasion, very nearly coming to blows.

The frequent changing of the ship's course, together with the incessant interference of these men one with another, considerably delayed our passage, and there were times when I would think that we should never double the Cape of Good Hope at all; but that, on the contrary, the three captains would quarrel themselves out of all perception of the ship's true reckoning, and end either in putting the vessel ashore, or in sending a boat to land on the first bit of coast they might sight to learn from the natives of the place where we were. Often, as I could observe, they differed merely to spite one another. For instance, Captain Parfitt, on quitting the deck, would leave the ship under all plain sail, royals set, and tacks boarded; but