As soon as the captain appeared, he began to pace athwartships between the hatch and the poop, keeping it up for several minutes in a dead silence. How well he knows how to handle a crew! Nothing is more effective than such a silence, for it shows the men that the skipper is about to act with deliberation. Suddenly he unexpectedly rapped out, “Go forrad, the port watch”; and the nine men quickly disappeared, wondrous glad to escape, no doubt. Now what the captain said to the rest I could not hear, for the wind cut his words off short; but he walked up among the men, shouldering his way roughly through them, until he stood directly in front of Murphy, who, though putting on some “side,” shrunk back from the glare that I knew shot from the old man’s eye. He spoke to him in the fierce, intense tones of a thoroughly angry man; and, after a considerable harangue, he seized Murphy by his nasal extremity, the size of which afforded him excellent holding ground, and led the recalcitrant youth around in a small circle, every few seconds tweaking and twisting his nose, till I was surprised that it did not part company with the rest of his face. This done, he sent the men forward, entered the cabin, sat down, and joined us in a game of casino. At first this seemed a very puerile manner of administering punishment, but it is considered wonderfully effective, and, in truth, it is humiliating to be hauled about by the nose in the presence of one’s companions. I had expected that Murphy would have been floored with a belaying-pin, that handy instrument of correction which most American masters and mates know so well how to wield. But Captain Scruggs seems to be restraining himself, owing in part, no doubt, to our presence on board, though chiefly to the space which the newspapers have been devoting lately to aggravated cases of cruelty at sea. Indeed, the skipper himself said the other day, “What’s a ship-master to do nowadays, when the press jumps on him when he gets ashore?” He forgets that if the said ship-master conducted himself at sea like the captain of a ship ought to, the press would have no cause for writing him up. The course has been poor, with the wind at times to the southward of east, and, horrible to relate, we made a degree of westing in the twenty-four hours. If we don’t have a better chance than this, we’ll be jammed on San Roque in earnest. Latitude 28° 30′ north; longitude, 43° west. +May 22+