Overdue | Page 9

Saint Paul ought to be. I
was now especially anxious to make that island, for the weather of the
past three or four days had been of such a character as to baffle the
most experienced of navigators, and I confess that I was beginning to
feel rather more than a trifle nervous. The island, however, hove into
view at the precise moment and in the precise quarter that it ought to do
if my reckoning happened to be correct; and this test and verification of
the accuracy of my working served to completely re-establish my
confidence in myself, so that, from that time onward, I never
experienced the least anxiety. I felt that so long as I could get tolerably
regular sights of the sun, moon, or stars I was not at all likely to go
wrong.
But before the island of Saint Paul had climbed up over the horizon that
stretched athwart our bows, I had become aware of a certain matter that,
while it struck me as being somewhat peculiar, seemed to bear no
further significance for me.
One of the first persons among the emigrant passengers aboard the

Mercury to attract my attention was a tall, thin, long-haired, sickly-
looking man, of about thirty years of age, clad in a suit of rusty black,
whose appearance and manner generally suggested to me the idea that
he must be by profession a schoolmaster. There was a certain air of
exaggerated earnestness of demeanour about him, and a wildness of
expression in his flashing coal-black eyes, that caused me to set him
down as being somewhat crack-brained. His name, I soon ascertained,
was Algernon Marcus Wilde, and he was among the first of the
emigrants to speak to me. He came to me, on the morning after I joined
the ship, with a complaint as to the quality and quantity of the food
served out to the occupants of the 'tween-decks; and I was as much
struck by the correctness of his speech, as by the excessive indignation
which he infused into his manner, when stating the nature of his alleged
grievance. I pointed out to him the fact that, whatever the quality of the
food might be, I was certainly not responsible for it, nor, in the event of
its proving to be unsuitable, could I remedy the matter away out there
in mid-ocean; but I promised to investigate the affair, and to do what
might be possible to remove the grievance, should I find such to
exist--of which I had my doubts after my brief but highly satisfactory
experience of the viands served up in the cabin.
I accordingly requested the steward to produce the dietary list which
formed the basis of the agreement between the owners and the
emigrants; and, upon going through it, was certainly unable to find any
just cause for complaint, so far as quantity was concerned. The question
of quality was of course a different matter; but here again, when, a day
or two later, I unexpectedly examined the food as it was being served
out at the galley, I was quite unable to discover any legitimate cause for
complaint. On the contrary, the food, although plain, was as good as it
was possible to obtain in those times aboard a ship that had been at sea
a hundred days; and it was excellently prepared. When I sent for Wilde,
and asked him to state specifically what he found wrong with the food
that I had just examined, all he could say was that it was not so good or
so varied in character as that which he had seen from time to time
carried aft for use in the cabin; and that in his opinion no distinction
whatever ought to be made in the treatment of persons occupying
different parts of the ship; also that he considered I ought to give

instructions for the emigrants to be fed henceforth from the stores
provided for cabin use; nor would he be satisfied, although I pointed
out that he was getting the food that the owners had undertaken to
provide him with in exchange for his passage money. Of course to
attempt to argue with so unreasonable an individual was obviously
absurd, and I therefore dismissed him and thought nothing more about
his complaints.
This, however, was not the matter of which I have spoken as gradually
obtruding itself upon my attention, although, had I only been able to
guess it, the two were not unconnected. What I noticed, almost from
the first moment of boarding the Mercury, without attaching any
particular importance to it, was that this man Wilde and a few of the
other male emigrants were in the habit of spending practically the
whole of the second dogwatch--which, in fine weather