ed to conduct the negotiations to
that end. With considerable difficulty, I persuaded him to accept the
responsibility.

He was a feeble-minded sort of fellow named Troutbeck, who was always in
a funk lest he should make enemies; never reflecting that most men would
a little rather be his enemies than not. He had once been the ship's
cook, but had cooked so poisonously ill that he had been forcibly
transferred from galley to quarter-deck by the dyspeptic survivors of
his culinary career.

The little captain went aft with me to listen to arguments of the
dissatisfied passengers and the obstinate steersman, as to whether we
should take our chances in the clouds, or tail off and run for the
opposite horizon; but on approaching the wheel, we found both helmsman
and passengers in a condition of profound astonishment, rolling their
eyes about towards every point of the compass, and shaking their heads
in hopeless perplexity. It was rather remarkable, certainly: the bank of
cloud which had worried the landsmen was now directly astern, and the
ship was cutting along lively in her own wake, toward the point from
which she had come, and straight away from Tottenham Court Road!
Everybody declared it was a miracle; the chaplain was piped up for
prayers, and the man at the wheel was as truly penitent as if he had
been detected robbing an empty poor-box.

The explanation was simple enough, and dawned upon me the moment I saw
how matters stood. During the dispute between the helmsman and the
deputation, the former had renounced his wheel to gesticulate, and I,
thinking no harm, had amused myself, during a rather tedious debate, by
revolving the thing this way and that, and had unconsciously put the
ship about. By a coincidence not unusual in low latitudes, the wind had
effected a corresponding transposition at the same time, and was now
bowling us as merrily back toward the place where I had embarked, as it
had previously wafted us in the direction of Tottenham Court Road, where
I had an aunt. I must here so far anticipate, as to explain that some
years later these various incidents--particularly the reading of "Naseby
Fight"--led to the adoption, in our mercantile marine, of a rule which I
believe is still extant, to the effect that one must not speak to the
man at the wheel unless the man at the wheel speaks first.

II

It is only by inadvertence that I have omitted the information that the
vessel in which I was now a pervad