to a place, I get there.
Do you understand? I may know nothing whatever about sailing and
navigation, but I get there just the same. Now you may be the best
seaman in the world, but on this ship you're just a plain ordinary
nuisance--very plain and very ordinary. And I am now going to call at
the nearest port and put you ashore."

"Yes, and think yourself lucky," Polynesia put in, "that you are not
locked up for stowing away and eating all our salt beef."

"I don't know what the mischief we're going to do now," I heard her
whisper to Bumpo. "We've no money to buy any more; and that salt beef
was the most important part of the stores."

"Would it not be good political economy," Bumpo whispered back, "if we
salted the able seaman and ate him instead? I should judge that he would
weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds."

"How often must I tell you that we are not in Jolliginki," snapped
Polynesia. "Those things are not done on white men's ships--Still," she
murmured after a moment's thought, "it's an awfully bright idea. I don't
suppose anybody saw him come on to the ship--Oh, but Heavens! we haven't
got enough salt. Besides, he'd be sure to taste of tobacco."

THE FIFTH CHAPTER. POLYNESIA HAS A PLAN

THEN the Doctor told me to take the wheel while he made a little
calculation with his map and worked out what new course we should take.

"I shall have to run for the Capa Blancas after all," he told me when
the seaman's back was turned. "Dreadful nuisance! But I'd sooner swim
back to Puddleby than have to listen to that fellow's talk all the way
to Brazil."

Indeed he was a terrible person, this Ben Butcher. You'd think that any
one after being told he wasn't wanted would have had the decency to keep
quiet. But not Ben Butcher. He kept going round the deck pointing out
all the things we had wrong. According to him there wasn't a thing right
on the whole ship. The anchor was hitched up wrong; the hatches weren't
fastened down properly; the sails were put on back to front; all our
knots were the wrong kind of knots.

At last the Doctor told him to stop talking and go downstairs. He
refused--said he wasn't going to be sunk by landlubbers while he was
still able to stay on deck.

This made us feel a little uneasy. He was such an enormous man there was
no knowing what he might do if he got really obstreperous.

Bumpo and I were talking about this downstairs in the dining-saloon
when Polynesia, Jip and Chee