CHAPTER V

On a fine afternoon, some two months after his release from the toils
of the sea, Captain Nugent sat in the special parlour of The Goblets.
The old inn offers hospitality to all, but one parlour has by ancient
tradition and the exercise of self-restraint and proper feeling been
from time immemorial reserved for the elite of the town.

The captain, confident in the security of these unwritten regulations,
conversed freely with his peers. He had been moved to speech by the
utter absence of discipline ashore, and from that had wandered to the
growing evil of revolutionary ideas at sea. His remarks were much
applauded, and two brother-captains listened with grave respect to a
disquisition on the wrongs of shipmasters ensuing on the fancied
rights of sailor men, the only discordant note being struck by the
harbour-master, a man whose ideas had probably been insidiously sapped
by a long residence ashore.

"A man before the mast," said the latter, fortifying his moral courage
with whisky, "is a human being."

"Nobody denies it," said Captain Nugent, looking round.

One captain agreed with him.

"Why don't they act like it, then?" demanded the other.

Nugent and the first captain, struck by the re-mark, thought they had
perhaps been too hasty in their admission, and waited for number two to