Truth to tell, the latter had been so flustered that he had let the _Dido_ come up two or three points off her course. But he soon got her nose straight again, with, for the first time, a feeling of hot satisfaction at his heart that, upon a day not far distant, he and the man with the red beard, and tip off his nose might, if there was any truth in dreams, be quits. Be sure that, by this Jack’s story was well known for’ard of the foremast. Bill Baker’s tongue had not been idle, and, although a few scoffed, more believed, and waited expectantly. ‘There’s more in dreams than most people thinks for,’ remarked an old sailor in the starboard watch, shaking his head sagely. ‘The first part o’ Jack’s has comed true. If I was Mister Horse I’d go a bit easy, an’ not haze the chap about the way he’s a-doing of.’ But the chief officer seemed to have taken an unaccountable dislike to Ashby from the moment he had first seen him. And this dislike he showed in every conceivable way until he nearly drove the poor chap frantic. At sea an evil-minded man in authority can do things of this sort with impunity. The process is called ‘hazing.’ The sufferer gets all the dirtiest and most disagreeable of the many such jobs to be found on shipboard. He is singled out from his fellows of the watch and sent aloft with tarry wads to hang on to a stay by his eyelashes. Or he is set to scraping masts, or greasing down, or slung outboard on a stage scrubbing paintwork, where every roll submerges him neck high, whilst his more fortunate companions are loafing about the decks. If the hazed one openly rebels, and gives his persecutor a good thrashing, he is promptly ‘logged,’ perhaps ironed, and at the end of the passage loses his pay, holding himself lucky not to have got six months in gaol for ‘mutiny on the high seas.’ There is another thing that may and does happen; and every day the crew of the _Dido_ watched placidly for the heavy iron-clad block, or marlingspike, sharp-pointed and massive, that by pure accident should descend from some lofty nook and brain or transfix their first officer—the Horse, as unmindful of the qualities of that noble animal, they had named him. But Jack Ashby never thought of such a thing. Nor did he take any notice of friendly hints from his mates—also sufferers, but in a less degree—that the best of spike lanyards would wear out by constant use, and that the best-fitted block-strops would at times fail to hold. Jack’s mind was far too much occupied by the approaching test to which his dream was to be subjected to bother about compassing a lesser revenge that might only end in maiming. He, by this, fully believed things were going to turn out exactly as he had seen them that night in Yamba men’s hut in the far-away Australian Bush. Therefore he looked upon himself and his tyrant as lost men.