No one listened, save Dag Daughtry, serving hot cakes and admiring.  But Simon Nishikanta, becoming suddenly aware that the old man was babbling, bellowed out ferociously: 

“Oh, shut up!  Close your jaw!  You make me tired with your everlasting ‘I remember.’”

The Ancient Mariner was guilelessly surprised, as if he had slipped somewhere in his narrative.

“No, I assure you,” he continued.  “It must have been some error of my poor old tongue.  It was not the Wide Awake, but the brig Glister.  Did I say Wide Awake?  It was the Glister, a smart little brig, almost a toy brig in fact, copper-bottomed, lines like a dolphin, a sea-cutter and a wind-eater.  Handled like a top.  On my honour, gentlemen, it was lively work for both watches when she went about.  I was super-cargo.  We sailed out of New York, ostensibly for the north-west coast, with sealed orders—­”

“In the name of God, peace, peace!  You drive me mad with your drivel!” So Nishikanta cried out in nervous pain that was real and quivering.  “Old man, have a heart.  What do I care to know of your Glister and your sealed orders!”

“Ah, sealed orders,” the Ancient Mariner went on beamingly.  “A magic phrase, sealed orders.”  He rolled it off his tongue with unction.  “Those were the days, gentlemen, when ships did sail with sealed orders.  And as super-cargo, with my trifle invested in the adventure and my share in the gains, I commanded the captain.  Not in him, but in me were reposed the sealed orders.  I assure you I did not know myself what they were.  Not until we were around old Cape Stiff, fifty to fifty, and in fifty in the Pacific, did I break the seal and learn we were bound for Van Dieman’s Land.  They called it Van Dieman’s Land in those days . . . "

It was a day of discoveries.  Captain Doane caught the mate stealing the ship’s position from his desk with the duplicate key.  There was a scene, but no more, for the Finn was too huge a man to invite personal encounter, and Captain Dome could only stigmatize his conduct to a running reiteration of “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and “Sorry, sir.”

Perhaps the most important discovery, although he did not know it at the time, was that of Dag Daughtry.  It was after the course had been changed and all sail set, and after the Ancient Mariner had privily informed him that Taiohae, in the Marquesas, was their objective, that Daughtry gaily proceeded to shave.  But one trouble was on his mind.  He was not quite sure, in such an out-of-the-way place as Taiohae, that good beer could be procured.

As he prepared to make the first stroke of the razor, most of his face white with lather, he noticed a dark patch of skin on his forehead just between the eyebrows and above.  When he had finished shaving he touched the dark patch, wondering how he had been sunburned in such a spot.  But he did not know he had touched it in so far as there was any response of sensation.  The dark place was numb.