"You're a perfect idiot, Coristine."

"You're a regular old muff, Wilkinson."

The Crew, thinking this was a special pantomime got up impromptu for his
benefit, roared with laughter, and applauded on the tiller. He was about
to execute a hoedown within tiller limits to testify his sympathy with
the fun, when the captain appeared in all his Sunday finery.

"Let her away, you laughing hyena," he yelled to the unlucky Sylvanus,
who regained his mental balance and laid his back to the tiller the
other way.

"Sorry I've no chairs for you gentlemen," he remarked to the seated
travellers; "but I guess the deck's as soft as the wooden kind."

"Don't mention it, my dear captain," said Coristine, as he sprang to his
feet; "we were only taking the latitude and longitude, but it's hard
work on the bones."

"You allow yourself too much latitude, sir, both in your actions and in
your unjustifiable remarks," muttered the pedagogue, more slowly
assuming the perpendicular.

"Now, captain," cried the lawyer, "I leave it you, sir, as a judge of
language, good and bad. What is the worst thing to call a man, a muff or
an idiot!"

The captain toyed with the lanyard of his tortoise shell rimmed glasses,
then put them deliberately across his nose, coughed judiciously, and