The whole unreasonableness, the monstrousness of the imposition of these brats on his ship suddenly came over him, and summed itself up in a single symbol: ‘If you go and wear holes in your drawers, do you think _I_ am going to mend them?--Lieber Gott! What do you think I am, eh? What do you think this ship is? What do you think we all are? To mend your drawers for you, eh? _To mend ... your ... drawers?_’ There was a pause, while they all stood thunderstruck. But even now he had not finished: ‘Where do you think you’ll get new ones, eh?’ he asked, in a voice explosive with rage. Then he added, with an insulting coarseness of tone: ‘And I’ll not have you going about my ship without them! See?’ Scarlet to the eyes with outrage they retreated to the bows. They could hardly believe so unspeakable a remark had crossed human lips. They assumed an air of lightness, and talked together in studied loud voices: but their joy was dashed for the day. So it was that--small as a man’s hand--a spectre began to show over their horizon: the suspicion at last that this was _not_ all according to plan, that they might even not be wanted. For a while their actions showed the unhappy wariness of the uninvited guest. Later in the afternoon, Jonsen, who had not spoken again, but looked from time to time acutely miserable, was still at the wheel. The mate had shaved himself and put on shore clothes, as a parable: he now appeared on deck: pretended not to see the captain, but strolled like a passenger up to the children and entered into conversation with them. ‘If I’m not fit to steer in foul weather, I’m not fit to steer in fair!’ he muttered, but without glancing at the captain. ‘He can take the helum all day and night, for all the help _I’ll_ give him!’ The captain appeared equally not to see the mate. He looked quite ready to take both watches till kingdom come. ‘If _he’d_ been at the wheel when that squall struck us,’ said the mate under his voice but with biting passion, ‘he’d have lost the ship! He’s no more eye for a squall coming than a sucker-fish! And he knows it, too: that’s what makes him go on this way!’ The children did not answer. It shocked them deeply to have to see a grown-up, a should-be Olympian, displaying his feelings. In exact opposition to the witnesses at the Transfiguration, they felt it would have been good for them to be almost anywhere rather than there. He was totally unconscious of their discomfort, however: too self-occupied to notice how they avoided catching his eye. ‘Look! There’s a steamship!’ exclaimed Margaret, with much too bright a brightness. The mate glowered at it. ‘Aye, they’ll be the death of us, those steamers,’ he said. ‘Every year there’s more of them. They’ll be using them for men-of-war next, and then where’ll we be? Times are bad enough without steamers.’