‘Then, sir,’ exclaimed the skipper with energy, ‘if he says it you may depend upon it he believes it, sir, and if he believes it then I dorn’t doubt that physical force by way of getting him out of his cabin would be the most dangerous thing that could be tried. It’s all the narves, sir. Them’s an arrangement fit to bust a man open by acting upon his imagination. Mr. Monson, sir, I’ll tell’ee what once happened to me. I had a fever, and when I recovered, my narves was pretty nigh all gone. I’d cry one moment like a baby, then laugh ready to split my sides over nothen at all. I took on a notion that I might lay wiolent hands on myself if the opportunity offered. It wasn’t that I wanted to hurt myself, but that I was afeered I _would_. I recollect being in my little parlour one day. There was a bit of a sideboard agin the wall with a drawer in which my missus kep’ the table knives we ate with. The thought of them knives gave me a fright. I wanted to leave the room, but to get to the door I should have to pass the drawer where them knives were, and I couldn’t stir. Your honour, such was the state of my narves that the agony of being dragged past that door would have been as bad as wrenching me in halves. So I got out through the window, and it was a fortnight afore I had the courage to look into that parlour again.’ ‘My father knew a rich gentleman in Melbourne,’ said Miss Jennings, ‘who lost his mind. He believed that he had been changed into a cat, and all day long he would sit beside a little crevice in the wainscot of his dining-room waiting for a mouse to appear.’ ‘But when it comes to imaginations of this kind,’ said I, ‘one is never to know what is going to follow. Captain Finn, my cousin may mend--I pray God he will do so, and soon----’ ‘Amen,’ quoth Finn in his deepest note. ‘Meanwhile,’ I continued, ‘I am of opinion that he should be watched.’ ‘You think so, sir!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, man, consider where we are. Send your eye into that mighty distance,’ I cried, pointing to the black junction of scintillant gloom and the spread of ocean coming to us thence in ink. ‘Think of our loneliness here and the condition that a madman’s act might reduce us to. That is not all. Lady Monson, this young lady, and her maid sleep close to his cabin. Who shall conjecture the resolution that may possess a diseased brain on a sudden? Sir Wilfrid must be watched, Finn.’ ‘I agree with you, sir,’ he answered thoughtfully, ‘but--but who’s to have the ordering of it? ’Tain’t for the likes of me, sir----’ He paused, then added, ‘He’s master here, ’ee know, sir.’ ‘I’ll make myself responsible,’ I exclaimed; ‘the trouble is to have him watched with the delicacy that shall defy the detection of his most suspicious humour should he put his head out of his berth or quit it--which he is not likely to do _yet_. Of course an eye would have to be kept upon him from without. Name me two or three of your trustiest seamen.’