ror as if we had thought them
all honest.

Things went fairly well with the exception of the lessons in Scripture.
Our work was mere playing at sailoring, helping furl sails, haul ropes,
study charts, carry messages, and such like. Temple made his voice
shrewdly emphatic to explain to the captain that we liked the work,
but that such lessons as these out of Scripture were what the eeriest
youngsters were crammed with.

'Such lessons as these, maybe, don't have the meaning on land they get
to have on the high seas,' replied the captain: 'and those youngsters
you talk of were not called in to throw a light on passages: for I
may teach you ship's business aboard my barque, but we're all children
inside the Book.'

He groaned heartily to hear that our learning lay in the direction of
Pagan Gods and Goddesses, and heathen historians and poets; adding, it
was not new to him, and perhaps that was why the world was as it was.
Nor did he wonder, he said, at our running from studies of those filthy
writings loose upon London; it was as natural as dunghill steam. Temple
pretended he was forced by the captain's undue severity to defend Venus;
he said, I thought rather wittily, 'Sailors ought to have a respect for
her, for she was born in the middle of the sea, and she steered straight
for land, so she must have had a pretty good idea of navigation.'

But the captain answered none the less keenly, 'She had her idea of
navigating, as the devil of mischief always has, in the direction where
there's most to corrupt; and, my lad, she teaches the navigation that
leads to the bottom beneath us.'

He might be right, still our mien was evil in reciting the lessons from
Scripture; and though Captain Welsh had intelligence we could not draw
into it the how and the why of the indignity we experienced. We had
rather he had been a savage captain, to have braced our spirits
to sturdy resistance, instead of a mild, good-humoured man of kind
intentions, who lent us his linen to wear, fed us at his table, and
taxed our most gentlemanly feelings to find excuses for him. Our way of
revenging ourselves becomingly was to laud the heroes of antiquity, as
if they had possession of our souls and touched the fountain of worship.
Whenever Captain Welsh exclaimed, 'Well done,' or the equivalent, 'That
's an idea,' we referred him to Plutarch for our great exemplar. It was
Alcibiades gracefully consuming his black broth that won the captain's
thanks for