, but it was a different
matter when the skipper acted as though he were not present at the
breakfast table, and being chary of interfering with the other's
self-imposed vow of silence, he rescued a couple of rashers from his
plate and put them on his own. Also, in order to put matters on a
more equal footing, he drank three cups of coffee in rapid succession,
leaving the skipper to his own reflections and an empty coffee-pot.
In this sociable fashion they got through most of the day, the skipper
refraining from speech until late in the afternoon, when, both being at
work in the hold, the mate let a heavy case fall on his foot.

"I thought you'd get it," he said, calmly, as Flower paused to take
breath; "it wasn't my fault."

"Whose was it, then?" roared Flower, who had got his boot off and was
trying various tender experiments with his toe to see whether it was
broken or not.

"If you hadn't been holding your head in the air and pretending that I
wasn't here, it wouldn't have happened," said Fraser, with some heat.

The skipper turned his back on him, and meeting a look of enquiring
solicitude from Joe, applied to him for advice.

"What had I better do with it?" he asked.

"Well, if it was my toe, sir," said Joe regarding it respectfully, "I
should stick it in a basin o' boiling water and keep it there as long as
I could bear it."

"You're a fool," said the skipper, briefly. "What do you think of it,
Ben? I don't think it's broken."

The old seaman scratched his head. "Well, if it belonged to me," he
said, slowly, "there's some ointment down the fo'c's'le which the cook
'ad for sore eyes. I should just put some o' that on. It looks good
stuff."

The skipper, summarising the chief points in Ben's character, which,
owing principally to the poverty of the English language, bore a
remarkable likeness to Joe's and the mate's, took his sock and boot in
his hand, and gaining the deck limped painfully to the cabin.

The foot was so painful after tea that he could hardly bear his
slipper on, and he went ashore in his working clothes to the chemist's,
preparatory to fitting himself out for Liston Street. The chemist,
leaning over the counter, was inclined to take a serious view of it, and
shaking his head with much solemnity, prepared a bottle of medicine, a
bottle of lotion and a box of ointment.

"Let me see it again as soon as you've finished the medicine," he said,
as he handed the articles over the counter.