ion-tamer, whose
beasts have begun to go bad. He must appear to invite attack, and upon
its first intimation of outbreak, he must punish, and punish memorably.

Captain Coulter was little above the average in physical pattern and he
walked with a slight defect of gait, throwing one foot out with an
emphatic stamp. His face was always clean-shaven, and it might have
served a sculptor for a type of the uncompromising Puritan, so hidden
were its brutalities and so strong its note of implacable resoluteness.

Over a high and rather protrusive forehead, long hair of iron gray was
always swept back. Bushy and aggressive brows shaded eyes singularly
piercing and of the same depth and coldness as polar ice. His nose was
large and straight, and his lips set tight and unyielding like the jaws
of a steel trap. The chin was square and close-shaven. Our captain was a
silent man, yet in his own fashion bitterly passionate. Heffernan, the
first mate, was a tawdry courtier, who studiously considered his chief
in every matter, and maintained his position of concord by ludicrous
care to risk no disagreement. In the stuffy cabin where three times a
day we sweltered over bad food Mansfield and I studied the attitudes of
the officers.

Coulter grimly amused himself over his eating by making absurd
statements for the sheer pleasure of seeing his next in command, fall
abjectly into agreement. The second mate, however, was impenetrably
silent. He was without fear, but a life which had evidently brought him
down a steep declivity from a lost respectability, had taught him
consideration for odds. If he did not contradict the dogmatic utterances
of his chief in table conversation, he at least refused to agree.

Mansfield and I were convinced that if this prematurely gray fellow with
the dissipated face, cut in a patrician mould, could ever be brought to
the point of personal narrative, he would have a stirring story to tell.
We also knew that he would never tell it.

Once before the feud between after-watch and fo'castle drove the
officers into an alliance of self-defense. A grave clash between the
captain and the second mate seemed inevitable. It was a night of
intolerable heat, and a sky spangled with stars hung over us low and
smothering. Lawrence, the second mate, was off watch, and joined us,
carrying a violin. Then under the weird depression and melancholy
lassitude which burdened us all, he began to improvise. Mansfield and I
listened