‘Now, pray, don’t say anything at all,’ interrupted my cousin, peevishly; ‘you’re losing time, Finn. Send that fellow aloft, will you? Gracious Heaven! can’t you see it makes one feel _desperate_ to understand that there’s nobody on the look-out?’ He jumped up and fell to pacing the deck with long, irritable strides. Finn, without another word, hurried forward. Presently the fellow who had first signalled sprang into the rigging with the glass slung over his shoulder. He ran nimbly aloft, and was speedily on the topgallant yard; and there he sat, with an arm embracing the mast, from time to time levelling the polished tube that glanced like a ray of light in his hand, and slowly sweeping the sea from one beam to another. Wilfrid came to a stand at sight of him; he clasped his arms on his breast, his gaze directed aloft, whilst he swayed on one leg, with the other bent before him to the heave of the deck; his melodramatic posture made one think of a Manfred in the act of assailing some celestial body with injurious language. It pained me to look at him. He was pale and haggard, but there was the spirit of high breeding in every lineament to give the grace of distinction and a quality of spiritual tenderness to his odd, irregular, uncomely face. He stared so long and so fixedly at the man that I saw the fellows forward looking up too, as though there must be something uncommon there to detain the baronet’s gaze. After a while he let his arms drop with an awakening manner, and slowly sent his eyes around the sea in the most absent way that could be thought of, till, his gaze meeting mine, he gave a start, and cried, with a flourish of one hand, whilst he pointed to the topgallant yard with the other, ‘Day and night, Charles; day and night! And keep _you_ on the look-out, too, will you, old friend? You carry a sailor’s eye in your head, and have hunted under canvas before. We mustn’t miss her! We mustn’t miss her!’ And with a shake of his head he abruptly strode to the companion and went below. I sat with Miss Jennings under the shelter of the bulwarks until hard upon luncheon-time. Wilfrid did not again make his appearance on deck that morning. The girl asked me if the test the men’s eyesight had been put to was my cousin’s notion. I answered that it was the captain’s. ‘Then how stupid of him, Mr. Monson!’ ‘Well, perhaps so,’ said I, ‘but I’m rather sorry for Finn, do you know. It is not only that he has to execute orders which he may consider ridiculous; he has to plot so as to harmonise the plain routine of shipboard life with Wilfrid’s irrational or extravagant expectations. But there is the mate. I have not spoken to him yet. Let’s hear what _he_ thinks of the skipper’s testing job.’