A captain, for instance, catches a man in such a deceit, never forgets it and refuses to believe the next man, who actually has hurt himself, so that the real sufferer has to bear the penalty of the other’s fraud. It is not a criminal offence, but a low, contemptible trick; though just such a one as a man with a face like Tim’s would be guilty of. The mate’s powers of divination are not particularly acute, for he observed one day off the river Plate, looking at Tim, “There goes a feller that _I_ call a good, faithful man.” At dinner to-day I chanced to remark that, as we had had such benefits from the easterly wind, we ought to accept our three points of easting now without grumbling. Mr. Goggins, however, is a fearful kicker, even for a sailor; so, thinking to please the old man, he instantly replied, “We ain’t had forty-eight hours o’ good luck on the hull passage.” This was so remarkable a statement that my wife was provoked into saying, gently but positively, “The man who talks like that doesn’t deserve to reach port for six months more.” “Well, we ain’t,” quoth Goggins, doggedly. Then I took a hand (it is usually best not to argue with him and the skipper), and asked as sarcastically as I could, “I suppose that three days’ easterly gale doesn’t count? And how about the first sixteen days of the voyage? You’re enough of a sailor, I suppose, though, to have forgotten all that.” I thought that he was floored; but he was possessed of more vitality than one would have supposed, for he came back at me with, “Well, the yards was ag’in the backstays all the time in the North Atlantic.” This was such a novel stand to take that we let him alone, so that he got up and tramped out of the cabin much inflated. What possible difference it could make whether or not the yards touched the backstays as long as the ship lay her course and went through the water was beyond my powers of reasoning.