ou like, if you are a collector of them. But what is the matter with
the captain?"

"It's aye the drink," the mate said gravely. "I can tak' my modicum
mysel' and enjoy it, but that's no the same as for a man to lock himself
up in his cabin, and drink rum steady on from four bells in the mornin'
watch to eight bells in the evenin'. And then the cussin', and prayin',
and swearin' as he sets up is just awfu'. It's what might weel be
described as pandemoniacal."

"Is he often like that, then?" Tom asked.

"Often! Why, he's never anything else, sir. And yet he's a good seaman
too, and however fu' he may be, he keeps some form o' reckoning, and
never vera far oot either. He's an ambeequosity to me, sir, for if I
took a tithe o' the amount I'd be clean daft."

"He must be dangerous when he is like that?" Tom remarked.

"He is that. He emptied a sax-shooter down the deck last bout he had,
and nigh perforated the carpenter. Another time he scoots after the
cook--chased him with a handspike in his hand right up the rigging to
the cross-trees. If the cook hadn't slid down the backstay of the mast,
he'd ha' been obeetuarised."

Tom could not refrain from laughing at the last expression. "That's a
new word," he said.

"Ha!" his companion cried with great satisfaction, "it is, is it?
Then we are quits now on the hypochondriacal." He was so pleased that
he chuckled to himself for some minutes in the depths of his tawny
beard. "Yes," he continued at last, "he is dangerous to us at times,
and he is dangerous to you. This is atween oorsels, as man to man, and
is said withoot prejudice, but he do go on when he is in they fits aboot
the firm, and aboot insurances, and rotten ships, and ither such things,
which is all vera well when sequestrated amang gentlemen like oorsels,
but sounds awfu' bad when it fa's on the ignorant tympanums of common
seamen."

"It's scandalous," Tom said gravely, "that he should spread such reports
about his employer. Our ships are old, and some of them, in my opinion,
hardly safe, but that's a very different thing from implying, as you
hint, that Mr. Girdlestone wishes them to go down."

"We'll no argue aboot that," said the canny Scot. "Muster Girdlestone
kens on which side his bread is buttered. He may wish 'em to sink or he
may wish 'em to swim. That's no for us to judge. You'll hear him speak
o't to-night as like as not, for he's aye on it when he's half over.
Here we are, sir.