"What do you mean?" he shouted at me. "I'll let you know I'll have no
impertinence from you or any one else."

"I don't mean any impertinence, Sir--I mean that it's the only
explanation there is to give."

"I tell you it won't wash!" he repeated. "There's something too damned
funny about it all. I shall have to report the matter to the Captain. I
can't tell him that yarn--" He broke off abruptly.

"It's not the only damned funny thing that's happened aboard this old
hooker," I answered. "You ought to know that, Sir."

"What do you mean?" he asked, quickly.

"Well, Sir," I said, "to be straight, what about that chap you sent us
hunting after up the main the other night? That was a funny enough
affair, wasn't it? This one isn't half so funny."

"That will do, Jessop!" he said, angrily. "I won't have any back talk."
Yet there was something about his tone that told me I had got one in on
my own. He seemed all at once less able to appear confident that I was
telling him a fairy tale.

After that, for perhaps half a minute, he said nothing. I guessed he was
doing some hard thinking. When he spoke again it was on the matter of
getting the Ordinary down on deck.

"One of you'll have to go down the lee side and steady him down," he
concluded.