Captain Johns was secretly glad when he heard of the damage. He was
indeed afraid of his chief mate, as the sea-pilot had ventured to
foretell, and afraid of him for the very reason the sea-pilot had put
forward as likely.

Captain Johns, therefore, would have liked very much to hold that
black mate of his at his mercy in some way or other. But the man was
irreproachable, as near absolute perfection as could be. And Captain
Johns was much annoyed, and at the same time congratulated himself on
his chief officer's efficiency.

He made a great show of living sociably with him, on the principle that
the more friendly you are with a man the more easily you may catch him
tripping; and also for the reason that he wanted to have somebody who
would listen to his stories of manifestations, apparitions, ghosts, and
all the rest of the imbecile spook-lore. He had it all at his fingers'
ends; and he spun those ghostly yarns in a persistent, colourless voice,
giving them a futile turn peculiarly his own.

"I like to converse with my officers," he used to say. "There are
masters that hardly ever open their mouths from beginning to end of a
passage for fear of losing their dignity. What's that, after all--this
bit of position a man holds!"

His sociability was most to be dreaded in the second dog-watch, because
he was one of those men who grow lively towards the evening, and the
officer on duty was unable then to find excuses for leaving the poop.
Captain Johns would pop up the companion suddenly, and, sidling up in
his creeping way to poor Bunter, as he walked up and down, would fire
into him some spiritualistic proposition, such as: