I wondered at Calhoun, that singular man, and wondered at this business altogether which I was in. For Cavarly and Morgan had played their great trick, and here was Calhoun tricking them, and how should I know what he might be doing with me, he a man so full of stratagem. I thought there would be no way of telling that, and I had better play the part that seemed to be laid out for me; but I felt very lonely and troubled, and not cheerful, not as I used to in setting off fire crackers behind Mr. Hooley, though that was considered perilous enough. I went up to Still, thinking to fall into talk with him indifferently, but my throat was gaspy and choked in an odd way. Still's pipe was out, and he wanted me to go forward and fetch him his plug. “Oh!” I said, with my knees shaking disgracefully, “you go, and let me hold the wheel.” “Hardly, Bennie, hardly. An' you learnin' seaman's duty o' me that way!” Some footsteps were coming along the deck, and I thought the chance was gone; but it was Calhoun. “I can steer good. Honest, Still. You see.” “Don't mind that,” said Still apologetically to Calhoun, “but 'twouldn't be right to leave him alone, sir.” “I'll stay here,” said Calhoun. “Ve'y good, sir.” He hurried away. Calhoun sat down, with his back to me and his feet braced on the rail. After all there was nothing difficult about it. I slipped the little black iron to its place, in the binnacle, to the left of the compass. It went in too far, so that the needle swung to east by south, and I had to pull the iron back. The needle lay trembling at right angles with the ship, and I began to turn the wheel nervously. “The fellow I was telling you of,” remarked Calhoun without looking around, “he took his time, so as not to disturb anyone. He didn't fidget. He kept his eye on the compass, counted eight points, and turned the wheel back.” The ship swung softly and steadily; the needle crept from point to point, till the quarter was covered. Still came along the deck, looming in the mist and puffing his pipe. “Hold her steady, Bennie,” he said. “Seaman's duty.” And there was nothing in the white sea-fog to betray; Calhoun's back was as non-committal as the fog; the little black iron with its ghost inside it lay on the shelf in the binnacle silently too. But the ship, slipping along through the fog so quietly, with so much misunderstanding aboard her, seemed to me something uncanny. I felt as if we were under a spell, and afterwards as if all the seamen looked at me oddly, wondering that so chubby-cheeked a boy should dare interfere with a ship's compass; and, when Morgan would call me “a sinful oyster who would be the death of him,” I longed to tell him what a mixed man he was, with no cause to joke at all. Sometimes Cavarly's remorse at having to drop me at some distant port would give me a twist of conscience in return.