d re-set. It was quite
deliberately done, as even a landsman could see; and it lost us a
couple of hundred yards off the captain's boat, sailing to starboard
of us.

"Things were scarcely right with us before Macnaughten had brought
his boat about close to wind and came ranging alongside. He had his
watch in his hand.

"'Mr. Grimalson,' he demanded, 'why were you fooling with that sail,
just now?'

"'She wasn't setting proper,' explained Grimalson; 'and I told Jarvis
to take a swig on the downhaul. He got messed up in the slack
somehow, and--'

"'Before you go any further,'--the captain cut him short--' I may
just tell you that your sail was setting perfectly, and that I saw
the whole business through my glass. . . . Hasn't Doctor Foe told you
that I require him, while this weather holds, to be on board this
boat regularly at ten minutes to noon, to take observations?'

"'Observations?' grumbled the second mate. 'I thought observations
to be a seaman's job. I reckoned that what doctors and suchlike took
was temperatures, and five minutes up or down wouldn't put anyone
out.'

"'I'm sorry,' answered Macnaughten, very quiet, after a moment's
thought,--'I am very sorry to tell you before your crew and
passengers what, with a ship under me, I should have called you aft
and below to hear in private. But if you ever use that tone with me
again, Mr. Grimalson, I shall take _your_ temperature with my
revolver. And if you dare to disobey my smallest order, as you
deliberately did just now, I shall transfer you to this boat and clap
you in irons. For it seems to me I have to explain to you what the
others,--crew and passengers alike--know by the light of common
sense: that until God's mercy delivers us my least word is the Ten
Commandments rolled into one, we being where a hand's turn is either
a hair's-breadth or broad as the Pacific. . . . Now cast off, and set
your behaviour by No. 1 boat, where Mr. Ingpen has come up to wind
and is waiting for us. . . . A cable's length on the port, and level
with us--that's the order, and you'll watch it until I give the next.
You have lost us twenty minutes. Happen _that_ might turn out the
hair's breadth I was speaking of--the difference between life and
death--and the whole Pacific ain't wider.'

"We were down in latitudes where the current sets southeasterly, and
this was helping us all the time. But on the sixth and seventh days,
although the wind held fair and light