e has not appeared--does not appear;
and we can only speculate and conjecture.

In the past three days various interesting things have taken place.
Margaret stands watch and watch with me, day and night, the clock around;
for there is no one of our retainers to whom we can entrust the
responsibility of a watch. Though mutiny obtains and we are besieged in
the high place, the weather is so mild and there is so little call on our
men that they have grown careless and sleep aft of the chart-house when
it is their watch on deck. Nothing ever happens, and, like true sailors,
they wax fat and lazy. Even have I found Louis, the steward, and Wada
guilty of cat-napping. In fact, the training-ship boy, Henry, is the
only one who has never lapsed.

Oh, yes, and I gave Tom Spink a thrashing yesterday. Since the
disappearance of the mate he had had little faith in me, and had been
showing vague signs of insolence and insubordination. Both Margaret and
I had noted it independently. Day before yesterday we talked it over.

"He is a good sailor, but weak," she said. "If we let him go on, he will
infect the rest."

"Very well, I'll take him in hand," I announced valorously.

"You will have to," she encouraged. "Be hard. Be hard. You must be
hard."

Those who sit in the high places must be hard, yet have I discovered that
it is hard to be hard. For instance, easy enough was it to drop Steve
Roberts as he was in the act of shooting at me. Yet it is most difficult
to be hard with a chuckle-headed retainer like Tom Spink--especially when
he continually fails by a shade to give sufficient provocation. For
twenty-four hours after my talk with Margaret I was on pins and needles
to have it out with him, yet rather than have had it out with him I
should have preferred to see the poop rushed by the gang from the other
side.

Not in a day can the tyro learn to employ the snarling immediacy of
mastery of Mr. Pike, nor the reposeful, voiceless mastery of a Captain
West. Truly, the situation was embarrassing. I was not trained in the
handling of men, and Tom Spink knew it in his chuckle-headed way. Also,
in his chuckle-headed way, he was dispirited by the loss of the mate.
Fearing the mate, nevertheless he had depended on the mate to fetch him
through with a whole skin, or at least alive. On me he has no
dependence. What chance had the gentleman passenger and the captain's
daughter against the gang for'ard? So he must have