Time" with the wrong sign,
before it seemed to me that he could have got as far as "half the
sum, minus the altitude." He was always right, too, and besides
he knew a lot about iron ships and local deviation, and adjusting
the compass, and all that sort of thing. I don't know how he came
to be in command of a fore-and-aft schooner. He never talked
about himself, and maybe he had just been mate on one of those
big steel square-riggers, and something had put him back. Perhaps
he had been captain, and had got his ship aground, through no
particular fault of his, and had to begin over again. Sometimes
he talked just like you and me, and sometimes he would speak more
like books do, or some of those Boston people I have heard. I
don't know. We have all been shipmates now and then with men who
have seen better days. Perhaps he had been in the Navy, but what
makes me think he couldn't have been, was that he was a thorough
good seaman, a regular old wind-jammer, and understood sail,
which those Navy chaps rarely do. Why, you and I have sailed with
men before the mast who had their master's certificates in their
pockets,--English Board of Trade certificates, too,--who could
work a double altitude if you would lend them a sextant and give
them a look at the chronometer, as well as many a man who
commands a big square-rigger. Navigation ain't everything, nor
seamanship, either. You've got to have it in you, if you mean to
get there.

I don't know how our captain heard that there was trouble
forward. The cabin-boy may have told him, or the men may have
talked outside his door when they relieved the wheel at night.
Anyhow, he got wind of it, and when he had got his sight that
morning he had all hands aft, and gave them a lecture. It was
just the kind of talk you might have expected from him. He said
he hadn't any complaint to make, and that so far as he knew
everybody on board was doing his duty, and that he was given to
understand that the men got their whack, and were satisfied. He
said his ship was never a hard ship, and that he liked quiet, and
that was the reason he didn't mean to have any nonsense, and the
men might just as well understand that, too. We'd had a great
misfortune, he said, and it was nobody's fault. We had lost a
man we all liked and respected, and he felt that everybody in the
ship ought to be sorry for the man's brother, who was left
behind, and that it was rotten lubberly childishness, and unjust
and unma