them perfectly. Their
resentment was very bitter. Mrs Brown had to remain ashore alone with
her rage, but the steward was nursing his on board. Poor Flora had no
greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had no greater sympathiser. And Mrs
Brown, with a woman's quick power of observation and inference (the
putting of two and two together) had come to a certain conclusion which
she had imparted to her husband before leaving the ship. The morose
steward permitted himself once to make an allusion to it in Powell's
hearing. It was in the officers' mess-room at the end of a meal while
he lingered after putting a fruit pie on the table. He and the chief
mate started a dialogue about the alarming change in the captain, the
sallow steward looking down with a sinister frown, Franklin rolling
upwards his eyes, sentimental in a red face. Young Powell had heard a
lot of that sort of thing by that time. It was growing monotonous; it
had always sounded to him a little absurd. He struck in impatiently
with the remark that such lamentations over a man merely because he had
taken a wife seemed to him like lunacy.

Franklin muttered, "Depends on what the wife is up to." The steward
leaning against the bulkhead near the door glowered at Powell, that
newcomer, that ignoramus, that stranger without right or privileges. He
snarled:

"Wife! Call her a wife, do you?"

"What the devil do you mean by this?" exclaimed young Powell.

"I know what I know. My old woman has not been six months on board for
nothing. You had better ask her when we get back."

And meeting sullenly the withering stare of Mr Powell the steward
retreated backwards.

Our young friend turned at once upon the mate. "And you let that
confounded bottle-washer talk like this before you, Mr Franklin. Well,
I am astonished."

"Oh, it isn't what you think. It isn't what you think." Mr Franklin
looked more apoplectic than ever. "If it comes to that I _could_
astonish you. But it's no use. I myself can hardly ... You couldn't
understand. I hope you won't try to make mischief. There was a time,
young fellow, when I would have dared any man--any man, you hear?--to
make mischief between me and Captain Anthony. But not now. Not now.
There's a change! Not in me though..."

Young Powell rejected with indignation any suggestion of making
mischief. "Who do you take me for?" he cried. "Only you had better
tell that steward to be careful what he says before me