’Yet it was not a sudden impulse.  His grey-headed mate, a first-rate sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, but in his relations with his commander the surliest chief officer I’ve ever seen, would tell the story with tears in his eyes.  It appears that when he came on deck in the morning Brierly had been writing in the chart-room.  “It was ten minutes to four,” he said, “and the middle watch was not relieved yet of course.  He heard my voice on the bridge speaking to the second mate, and called me in.  I was loth to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow—­I couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of.  He had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but by the way he said ‘Good morning.’  I never addressed him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep a civil tongue in my head.” (He flattered himself there.  I often wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half a voyage.) “I’ve a wife and children,” he went on, “and I had been ten years in the Company, always expecting the next command—­more fool I. Says he, just like this:  ‘Come in here, Mr. Jones,’ in that swagger voice of his—­’Come in here, Mr. Jones.’  In I went.  ’We’ll lay down her position,’ says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand.  By the standing orders, the officer going off duty would have done that at the end of his watch.  However, I said nothing, and looked on while he marked off the ship’s position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and the time.  I can see him this moment writing his neat figures:  seventeen, eight, four A.M.  The year would be written in red ink at the top of the chart.  He never used his charts more than a year, Captain Brierly didn’t.  I’ve the chart now.  When he had done he stands looking down at the mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks up at me.  ‘Thirty-two miles more as she goes,’ says he, ’and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course twenty degrees to the southward.’

’"We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that voyage.  I said, ‘All right, sir,’ wondering what he was fussing about, since I had to call him before altering the course anyhow.  Just then eight bells were struck:  we came out on the bridge, and the second mate before going off mentions in the usual way—­’Seventy-one on the log.’  Captain Brierly looks at the compass and then all round.  It was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as on a frosty night in high latitudes.  Suddenly he says with a sort of a little sigh:  ’I am going aft, and shall set the log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no mistake.  Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe.  Let’s see—­the correction on the log is six per cent. additive; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may come twenty degrees to starboard at once.  No use losing any