remarked, "you have been mixing your
`nightcap' too strong to-night, and are scarcely in a fit condition to
have charge of the brig. Go below and sleep it off. I will take your
watch for you, with pleasure."

"Oh, will you?" Purchas had retorted disagreeably. "Le' me tell you,
shir, tha' you'll do nothin' o' short; I'm qui' cap'le lookin' after
thi' ship or any other ship that ever was built; and I won' have you or
any other man tryin' take my charac'er away. You go b'low an' leave me
'lone. D'ye hear?"

Seeing at once that the man was in much too quarrelsome a condition to
be satisfactorily reasoned with, Leslie had at once left him and gone
below; only to return, however, within the next ten minutes to find
Purchas stretched at full length upon a hencoop, fast asleep and snoring
stertorously.

On the morning following this incident Leslie, finding the skipper once
more sober and, as usual under those circumstances, quite genial and
friendly, tackled him again upon the subject.

"I want to talk to you very seriously, Purchas," he said, as the two
walked the weather side of the deck together, smoking, after breakfast.
"You are now the skipper of this brig, you know; and, as such, are
accountable to nobody but your owners for your conduct. But this, as I
have understood you to say, is your first command; and whether you
retain it or not after the termination of this voyage must necessarily
depend to a very great extent upon your behaviour _now_. Insobriety is,
as I need hardly tell you, the one unpardonable sin in the eyes of a
shipowner. No man will knowingly entrust his property to the care of
another who, even only occasionally, permits himself to take too much
liquor, because he can never know just when that overdose may be taken.
He is always ready to believe that it may be imbibed at the most
inopportune moment, and that the master of his ship may be under its
influence at the precise instant when the safety of the ship, crew, and
cargo demand his utmost vigilance and most intelligent resource. And
although you may imagine that what you do out here in mid-ocean cannot
possibly reach the ears of your owner, you must not forget that sailors
have a keen eye for what goes on aft; a skipper cannot get drunk without
the fact reaching the sharp ears of those in the forecastle. It is one
of the easiest things in the world for an officer to acquire, among his
crew, a reputation for insobriety; and, once they