"Mackerel?" said Captain Pomery. "If ye found one fool enough to take hold at the rate we're sailing, ye'd pull his head off." "Why, then, he would be off his head," answered I: "and there are plenty here to make him feel at home." In truth I was nettled; jealous, as a lad in his first friendship is quick to be. Were not Nat and I of one age? Then why should he be leaving thoughts we might share, to think of woman? I had chafed at Oxford against his precocious entanglements. Here on shipboard his propensity was past a joke; with no goose in sight to mistake for a swan, he must needs conjure up an imaginary princess for his devotion. What irritated most of all was his assuming, because I had not arrived at his folly, the right to treat me as a child. South and across the Bay of Biscay the weather gave us a halcyon passage; the wind falling lighter and lighter until, within ten leagues of Gibraltar, we ran into a flat calm, and Captain Pomery's face began to show his vexation. The vexation I could understand--for your seaman naturally hates calm weather--but scarcely the degree of it in a man of temperament so placid. Hitherto he had taken delight in the strains of Mr. Badcock's flute. Suddenly, and almost pettishly, he laid an embargo on that instrument, and moreover sent word down to the hold and commanded old Worthyvale to desist from hammering on the ballast. All noise, in fact, appeared to irritate him. Mr. Badcock pocketed his flute in some dudgeon, and for occupation fell to drinking with Mr. Fett; whose potations, if they did not sensibly lighten the ship, heightened, at least, her semblance of buoyancy with a deck-cargo of empty bottles. My father put no restraint upon these topers. "Drink, gentlemen," said he; "drink by all means so long as it amuses you. I had far rather you exceeded than that I should appear inhospitable." "Magnifshent old man," Mr. Fett hiccuped to me confidentially, "_an'_ magnifshent liquor. As the song shays--I beg your pardon, the shong says--able 'make a cat speak an' man dumb-- "Like 'n old courtier of the queen's An' the queen's old courtier--" Chorus, Mr. Bawcock, _if_ you please, an', by the way, won't mind my calling you Bawcock, will you? Good Shakespearean word, bawcock: euphonious, too-- "Accomplisht eke to flute it and to sing, Euphonious Bawcock bids the welkin ring." "If," said Mr. Badcock, in an injured tone and with a dark glance aft at Captain Pomery, "if a man don't _like_ my playing, he has only to say so. I don't press it on any one. From all I ever heard, art is a matter of taste. But I don't understand a man's being suddenly upset by a tune that, only yesterday, he couldn't hear often enough."