Last night when I went on deck at 9.30 the skipper was on the lee side, looking at the heavens. On seeing me he said, “Well, there’s our old friend, the pole star; we haven’t seen him for many a day.” Now, I ought to have known better than to attempt any joke, but it seemed likely that he would surely know this ancient pleasantry of mariners, so I answered,-- “Yes; as the saying is, the pole star is the first land you make coming up from Cape Horn.” This threw him into a grave meditation, at the end of which he ominously observed, “I don’t see what you mean.” I had by this time forgotten all about the star, and had to ask him in turn what _he_ meant. “Why, how do you mean that the pole star is the first land you make?” he demanded, bristling; “you often see Juan Fernandez.” “Oh, well,” I answered, desiring propitiation, “sailors used to say that in the old days, meaning that it reminded them that they were once more in northern latitudes.” “Well, _I_ never heard it,” he returned; “and, anyhow, we don’t know whether hit’s land _or_ water.” Here I fled, unable to withstand the strain any longer. At dinner to-day he unexpectedly relapsed into his usual morose, contrary humor, and came strutting and stamping into the dining-room, glaring at every object, till his eye lit on a plate of rather stale hard bread on the table; then he grabbed some, fiercely bit an enormous piece out of it, threw the rest back into the platter, dropped into his seat with a crash that shook the tumblers, and shouted at the quaking steward, “Ain’t I told yer not to put nothin’ on the table but what’s fit for a white man to eat?” Deep silence followed as he dashed the soup around in the tureen with the ladle and fell upon his dinner; and my wife, without thinking, observed, “Well, this is the hottest we have had yet.” “No,” said Captain Scruggs, “it ain’t, hit’s nice and cool.” Angry at this flat contradiction, I told him that the thermometer, unlike many people, always told the truth, and that it was 88° on deck. “In the sun,” he replied, which he knew wasn’t so; while that devilish Goggins smiled blandly at us, as if to say, “You can’t catch _him_”; but I stood by for developments. Presently the old man began to shift about in his seat; then he made the curious remark that it was too warm for rain; in ten minutes more the perspiration began to stream from his face, and in another five minutes he got up and left the cabin, almost prostrated with the heat on this cool and pleasant day; though as he departed he attributed it to “them beans bein’ too heavy eatin’.” The mate followed him, with a face like a worn-out wet carriage sponge.