‘A man can but do his best, sir,’ he said to me. ‘Sir Wilfrid needs a deal of humouring; you can see that, sir. I knew all along, when he first came and told me what had happened and gave me my orders, that the job of keeping him pacified would have to go hand in hand with the business of sailing the “Bride” and lighting upon the “Shark,” if so be she’s discoverable. My notion is that if you’re called upon so to act as to fit an employer’s taste and keep his views and wishes gratified, though by no more than maintaining expectation in him, the best thing is to tarn to and try to think as fur as you can the same way as he do. I don’t mind saying, Mr. Monson, that I allow the whole of this here voyage to be as wague as wagueness can well be; therefore why worrit over parts of it? Suppose we overhaul the “Shark”--then it’ll be all right; suppose we _don’t_--then it won’t be for the want of trying.’ This was the substance of Finn’s opinion as he imparted it to me that night. His sincerity touched me; besides, I saw worry enough in the poor fellow to make me sorry for him. Indeed, I resolved from that hour to back him up, heartily agreeing with him that the adventure was quite too vague to justify anxiety in respect of any one detail of the programme. The weather was quiet when I went to bed that night. I came below from my long yarn with Finn, leaving a windy smear of moon over our mastheads and a dark sky going down from it to the obscured sea-line, with here and there a pale and vapoury point of star hovering sparely over a wing of cloud that lay still in the dusk, as though what wind there was blew low upon the waters. The wide sea came to the yacht in a dusky throbbing, like folds of gloom rolling with a sort of palpitation in them to the eye; the foam glanced in places, but there was little weight in the wind, and the pallid spires of the yacht’s canvas floated nearly upright through the dark atmosphere, with a sound of the sob of water coming off her weather bow and the dead plash of the hidden billow falling without life from her quarter, in a way that made one think there were fellows emptying buckets over the side abreast of the wheel.