She was silent--a little awed, I think, by my emphatic manner, perhaps by a certain note of sternness, for I had been irritated, besides being nervous; and then, again, my distaste for the trip worked very strongly in me whilst I was talking to her. We were a somewhat gloomy ship for the rest of the day. I noticed that the seamen wore tolerably grave faces at their several jobs, and it was easy to gather that, now they had had time to digest the incident of the morning, it was as little to their taste as it was to ours aft. Indeed it was impossible to tell what kind of omen they might manufacture out of so tragic an affair. Sailors were very much more superstitious in those days than they are now; the steam fiend has wonderfully cleared the atmosphere of the forecastle, and the sea-goblin has long since made his final dive from the topgallant-rail to keep company with the mermaid in her secret bower of coral in a realm fathoms deep beneath the ocean ooze. O’Connor tried very hard to look as if he felt that on the whole he almost deserved to be hanged for his blundersome extermination of the Portugee heathen; at least this seemed his air when, as he sat stitching on a sail in the waist, he suspected a quarterdeck gaze to be directed at him. But it is hard for a man with merry blue eyes and cheeks veritably grinning with ruddiness in the embrace of a huge hearty pair of carefully doctored whiskers to look contrite. The Irishman did his best, but I laughed to see how the instant he forgot his part nature jovially broke out in him again. Crimp had charge that afternoon, and when I arrived on deck with a cigar in my mouth, leaving Miss Jennings and her maid hanging together over a hat whose feather in some way or other had gone wrong, I asked the mate what was his opinion of the accident of the morning. ‘Ain’t got any opinion about it at all,’ he answered. ‘It was an accident, let us believe,’ said I. ‘Pure hignorance more like,’ he answered. ‘That there O’Connor’s regularly ate up with pride. He’s all bounce. Says he’s descended from kings and if he had his rights he’d be at the head o’ Ulster or some such place as that ’stead of an able seaman. _He_ know anything ’bout firing off cannons!’ making a horrible face and going to the side to spit. ‘Did they understand what you said aboard the brig when you talked to them from the boat?’ ‘Ne’er a word.’ ‘Was the red-capped man hurt?’ ‘Dazed. Eyes pretty nigh out on’s cheeks. He was too full o’ salt water to curse, I allow, so when we hauled him into the boat he fell on his knees and prayed. A bloomin’ poor job; a measly mean business! Knocking of a boat to pieces an’ drownding of a man. What’s the good o’ that there gun? Only fit to kick up a plaguey shindy. Next time it may bust and then, stand by! for I once see an explosion.’