round to the subject of the skipper and his peculiarities, from which I
arrived at the conclusion that, after all, Carter and the general must
have had some grounds for the apprehensions that they had expressed to
me.

Now, of our party of ten who had been received on board the _Indian
Queen_, six of us were wounded, and of those six three were so severely
hurt as to be quite unfit for duty, and the other three, of whom I was
one, were able to do such deck duty as keeping a look-out, taking a
trick at the wheel, and so on, but, excepting myself, were scarcely fit
to go aloft just yet. But I did not think it right or desirable that
those of us who were in a fit state to work should eat the bread of
idleness. I had therefore seized the opportunity afforded by my talk
with the skipper that morning to suggest that my four unwounded and two
slightly-wounded men should assist in the working of the ship; as for
myself, I said that I should be very pleased to take charge of one of
the watches, if such an arrangement would be of any assistance to him.
This, of course, was quite the right and proper thing for me to do, and
although the ship carried a complement of thirty hands, all told, I was
not in the least surprised that Williams should accept, quite as a
matter of course, my offer of the men, three of whom he placed in the
port watch, and three in the starboard, the latter being under the
boatswain, a big, bullying, brow-beating fellow named Tonkin. But he
declined the offer of my personal services, saying that he could do
quite well without them. This arrangement having been come to, I made
it my business to speak to the boatswain, into whose watch the two
slightly-wounded men had been put, informing him of what had passed
between the skipper and myself, and requesting him not to send the
wounded men aloft, as I did not consider that they could safely venture
into the rigging in their partially disabled condition. And I also
cautioned the men not to attempt to go aloft, should the boatswain
happen to forget what I had told him, and order them to do so, taking
care to give them this caution in Tonkin's presence and hearing in order
that there might be no mistake or misunderstanding.

I was therefore very much surprised, and considerably annoyed, when, as
we were all gathered together on the poop that same evening, during the
first dogwatch, I heard the sounds of a violent altercation proceeding
on the fore-deck, and,