The captain, confident in the security of these unwritten regulations, conversed freely with his peers. He had been moved to speech by the utter absence of discipline ashore, and from that had wandered to the growing evil of revolutionary ideas at sea. His remarks were much applauded, and two brother-captains listened with grave respect to a disquisition on the wrongs of shipmasters ensuing on the fancied rights of sailor men, the only discordant note being struck by the harbour-master, a man whose ideas had probably been insidiously sapped by a long residence ashore.
“A man before the mast,” said the latter, fortifying his moral courage with whisky, “is a human being.”
“Nobody denies it,” said Captain Nugent, looking round.
One captain agreed with him.
“Why don't they act like it, then?” demanded the other.
Nugent and the first captain, struck by the remark, thought they had perhaps been too hasty in their admission, and waited for number two to continue. They eyed him with silent encouragement.
“Why don't they act like it, then?” repeated number two, who, being a man of few ideas, was not disposed to waste them.
Captain Nugent and his friend turned to the harbour-master to see how he would meet this poser.
“They mostly do,” he replied, sturdily. “Treat a seaman well, and he'll treat you well.”
This was rank heresy, and moreover seemed to imply something. Captain Nugent wondered dismally whether life ashore would infect him with the same opinions.
“What about that man of mine who threw a belaying-pin at me?”
The harbour-master quailed at the challenge. The obvious retort was offensive.
“I shall carry the mark with me to my grave,” added the captain, as a further inducement to him to reply.
“I hope that you'll carry it a long time,” said the harbour-master, gracefully.
“Here, look here, Hall!” expostulated captain number two, starting up.
“It's all right, Cooper,” said Nugent.
“It's all right,” said captain number one, and in a rash moment undertook to explain. In five minutes he had clouded Captain Cooper's intellect for the afternoon.
He was still busy with his self-imposed task when a diversion was created by the entrance of a new arrival. A short, stout man stood for a moment with the handle of the door in his hand, and then came in, carefully bearing before him a glass of gin and water. It was the first time that he had set foot there, and all understood that by this intrusion Mr. Daniel Kybird sought to place sea-captains and other dignitaries on a footing with the keepers of slop-shops and dealers in old clothes. In the midst of an impressive silence he set his glass upon the table and, taking a chair, drew a small clay pipe from his pocket.
Aghast at the intrusion, the quartette conferred with their eyes, a language which is perhaps only successful in love. Captain Cooper, who was usually moved to speech by externals, was the first to speak.
“You've got a sty coming on your eye, Hall,” he remarked.
“I daresay.”
“If anybody's got a needle,” said the captain, who loved minor operations.
Nobody heeded him except the harbour-master, and he muttered something about beams and motes, which the captain failed to understand. The others were glaring darkly at Mr. Kybird, who had taken up a newspaper and was busy perusing it.
“Are you looking for anybody?” demanded Captain Nugent, at last.
“No,” said Mr. Kybird, looking at him over the top of his paper.
“What have you come here for, then?” inquired the captain.
“I come 'ere to drink two o' gin cold,” returned Mr. Kybird, with a dignity befitting the occupation.
“Well, suppose you drink it somewhere else,” suggested the captain.
Mr. Kybird had another supposition to offer. “Suppose I don't?” he remarked. “I'm a respect-able British tradesman, and my money is as good as yours. I've as much right to be here as you 'ave. I've never done anything I'm ashamed of!”
“And you never will,” said Captain Cooper's friend, grimly, “not if you live to be a hundred.”
Mr. Kybird looked surprised at the tribute. “Thankee,” he said, gratefully.
“Well, we don't want you here,” said Captain Nugent. “We prefer your room to your company.”
Mr. Kybird leaned back in his chair and twisted his blunt features into an expression of withering contempt. Then he took up a glass and drank, and discovered too late that in the excitement of the moment he had made free with the speaker's whisky.
“Don't apologize,” interrupted the captain; “it's soon remedied.”
He took the glass up gingerly and flung it with a crash into the fireplace. Then he rang the bell.
“I've smashed a dirty glass,” he said, as the bar-man entered. “How much?”
The man told him, and the captain, after a few stern remarks about privacy and harpies, left the room with his friends, leaving the speechless Mr. Kybird gazing at the broken glass and returning evasive replies to the inquiries of the curious Charles.
He finished his gin and water slowly. For months he had been screwing up his courage to carry that room by assault, and this was the result. He had been insulted almost in the very face of Charles, a youth whose reputation as a gossip was second to none in Sunwich.
“Do you know what I should do if I was you?” said that worthy, as he entered the room again and swept up the broken glass.
“I do not,” said Mr. Kybird, with lofty indifference.
“I shouldn't come 'ere again, that's what I should do,” said Charles, frankly. “Next time he'll throw you in the fireplace.”
“Ho,” said the heated Mr. Kybird. “Ho, will he? I'd like to see 'im. I'll make 'im sorry for this afore I've done with 'im. I'll learn 'im to insult a respectable British tradesman. I'll show him who's who.”
“What'll you do?” inquired the other.
“Never you mind,” said Mr. Kybird, who was not in a position to satisfy his curiosity—“never you mind. You go and get on with your work, Charles, and p'r'aps by the time your moustache 'as grown big enough to be seen, you'll 'ear something.”
“I 'eard something the other day,” said the bar-man, musingly; “about you it was, but I wouldn't believe it.”
“Wot was it?” demanded the other.
“Nothing much,” replied Charles, standing with his hand on the door-knob, “but I wouldn't believe it of you; I said I couldn't.”
“Wot—was—it?” insisted Mr. Kybird.
“Why, they said you once gave a man a fair price for a pair of trousers,” said the barman, indignantly.
He closed the door behind him softly, and Mr. Kybird, after a brief pause, opened it again and, more softly still, quitted the precincts of The Goblets, and stepped across