If a
sea hit us exceptionally hard he'd be out of the cabin in an instant
making an outcry of inquiries, and he was pursued by a dread of the
hold, of ballast shifting, of insidious wicked leaks. As we drew near
the African coast his fear of rocks and shoals became infectious.
"I do not know dis coast," he used to say. "I cama hera because
Gordon-Nasmyth was coming too. Den he does not come!"
"Fortunes of war," I said, and tried to think in vain if any motive but
sheer haphazard could have guided Gordon-Nasmyth in the choice of these
two men. I think perhaps Gordon-Nasmyth had the artistic temperament and
wanted contrasts, and also that the captain helped him to express his
own malignant Anti-Britishism.
He was indeed an exceptionally inefficient captain. On the whole I was
glad I had come even at the eleventh hour to see to things.
(The captain, by-the-by, did at last, out of sheer nervousness, get
aground at the end of Mordet's Island, but we got off in an hour or so
with a swell and a little hard work in the boat.)
I suspected the mate of his opinion of the captain long before he
expressed it.
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