And, indeed, poor P-, quite young, and a smart seaman, was very hard of hearing.  At the same time, he had the name of being the very devil of a fellow for carrying on sail on a ship.  He was wonderfully clever at concealing his deafness, and, as to carrying on heavily, though he was a fearless man, I don’t think that he ever meant to take undue risks.  I can never forget his naive sort of astonishment when remonstrated with for what appeared a most dare-devil performance.  The only person, of course, that could remonstrate with telling effect was our captain, himself a man of dare-devil tradition; and really, for me, who knew under whom I was serving, those were impressive scenes.  Captain S- had a great name for sailor-like qualities—­the sort of name that compelled my youthful admiration.  To this day I preserve his memory, for, indeed, it was he in a sense who completed my training.  It was often a stormy process, but let that pass.  I am sure he meant well, and I am certain that never, not even at the time, could I bear him malice for his extraordinary gift of incisive criticism.  And to hear him make a fuss about too much sail on the ship seemed one of those incredible experiences that take place only in one’s dreams.

It generally happened in this way:  Night, clouds racing overhead, wind howling, royals set, and the ship rushing on in the dark, an immense white sheet of foam level with the lee rail.  Mr. P-, in charge of the deck, hooked on to the windward mizzen rigging in a state of perfect serenity; myself, the third mate, also hooked on somewhere to windward of the slanting poop, in a state of the utmost preparedness to jump at the very first hint of some sort of order, but otherwise in a perfectly acquiescent state of mind.  Suddenly, out of the companion would appear a tall, dark figure, bareheaded, with a short white beard of a perpendicular cut, very visible in the dark—­Captain S-, disturbed in his reading down below by the frightful bounding and lurching of the ship.  Leaning very much against the precipitous incline of the deck, he would take a turn or two, perfectly silent, hang on by the compass for a while, take another couple of turns, and suddenly burst out: 

“What are you trying to do with the ship?”

And Mr. P-, who was not good at catching what was shouted in the wind, would say interrogatively: 

“Yes, sir?”

Then in the increasing gale of the sea there would be a little private ship’s storm going on in which you could detect strong language, pronounced in a tone of passion and exculpatory protestations uttered with every possible inflection of injured innocence.

“By Heavens, Mr. P-!  I used to carry on sail in my time, but—­”

And the rest would be lost to me in a stormy gust of wind.

Then, in a lull, P-’s protesting innocence would become audible: 

“She seems to stand it very well.”

And then another burst of an indignant voice: