In the fine weather of the trades the old suit of sails was bent, as the captain said, "She must have on her old clothes to tar down in."
The mainsail was bent one afternoon, and in the inevitable inspection and criticism which followed, the captain informed Mr. Morrison that the bunt-lines were clinched into the foot of the sail the wrong way.
"Why, they ought to be rove from forward aft," said he.
"I don't think so, sir," answered the mate; "they ought to be rove from aft forward."
"But look at the philosophy of the thing," said the captain; "don't you see there'd be more chafe on the sail your way?"
"No sir, I don't," said the mate; "the philosophy is all the other way. They've been bent after your fashion before, and the sail we've just taken down is about chafed through in the wake of the clinches."
"I've heard the thing argued by intelligent men and they all agreed with me," said the captain.
"If you want to have it done your way of course you can have it," answered the mate, "but it's wrong, and no intelligent man ever said differently."
The captain, during this conversation gradually worked himself into a furious passion, but there was something in Mr. Morrison's demeanor which always kept him from giving the vent to his rage, as he did with every one else, and after the conversation had been continued a while longer in a similar strain to the above, he quietly turned away and walked towards the cabin, but as he passed me he muttered in an audible tone, "I've never been insulted before in my life, as I have been by that man."
He worked off some of his spleen that evening by exercising the boys with the watch-tackle, and giving them a bountiful allowance of his favorite prescription, "rope yarn tea."
But he did not get back into his pleasant mood very soon, and he snarled at and picked on the officers and made them ugly, and they relieved their wrath by growling at the crew, and the men in their turn got cross, and pretty soon all hands and the cook were in hot water. There was a great deal of work going on, and if any of Mr. Morrison's men blundered they were very apt to get a rope's-ending, and if Mr. Howard's men were at fault, and sometimes when they were not, they had to dodge their heads for a belaying pin or stick of wood.