However I found something to raise a hope in me too, in his odd, variable, imperfect intellect; namely, that he might come presently to but dimly comprehend the purport of this voyage, and then I did not doubt of being able to influence him and carry him back home, in short; for the wild uncertainty of the adventure was made to my mind more extravagant still by the inspiration of it being due to my poor cousin’s weak brains; in fact, not to mince my meaning, it would have been a mad undertaking in the sanest man’s hands; to my fancy, then, it became the completest expression of madness possible, when I thought of a madman as conceiving and governing it. Finn, as I afterwards learnt, sent the other watch aloft whilst we were at lunch, and there they hung, staring away for an hour; when, just as the captain was about to sing out to them to come down, a fellow on the foreyard (the lowest of the three yards) signalled a sail, and then all hands saw it together! so, to arrest any further grumbling, Finn gave five shillings to the foreyard man and made the watch draw lots for the other two five-shilling prizes. This arrangement satisfied them, and it seemed to soothe the fellows in the other watch as well, who perhaps now perceived that there was little but inanity in the test, and that the only sensible way to treat the whole affair was to look upon it as a joke. This I learnt afterwards from Finn, who did not show himself much surprised to hear that Sir Wilfrid had apparently forgotten the incident of the morning. ‘You’ll forgive me saying of it, Mr. Monson,’ he exclaimed, ‘seeing it is your own cousin I’m speaking about, sir; but I’ve been master of his yacht now since he bought her for her ladyship, and I know this much of Sir Wilfrid, that his mind ain’t as if it were half the time with the orders he gives. He’ll say a thing without the eyes of his intellects being upon it. The result is that soon after the words is off his lips the sentiment of ’em is gone from his recollection. It is like breathing on a looking-glass; there’s the mark, but it don’t last long.’