"But if there's a captain," replied Bolton, "I'll bet two months' pay we shall see him before long." "I should like to tell the captain a bit of my mind," said Pen. "Who's talking about the captain?" said a new-comer. It was Clifton, the sailor, a superstitious and envious man. "Is anything new known about the captain?" he asked. "No," they all answered at once. "Well, I believe we shall find him one fine morning installed in his cabin, and no one will know how he got there." "Get along, do!" replied Bolton. "Why, Clifton, you imagine that he's a hobgoblin--a sort of wild child of the Highlands." "Laugh as much as you like, Bolton, you won't change my opinion. Every day as I pass his cabin I look through the keyhole. One of these fine mornings I shall come and tell you what he's like." "Why, he'll be like everyone else," said Pen, "and if he thinks he'll be able to do what he likes with us, he'll find himself mistaken, that's all!" "Pen don't know him yet," said Bolton, "and he's beginning to quarrel with him already." "Who doesn't know him?" said Clifton, looking knowing; "I don't know that he don't!" "What the devil do you mean?" asked Gripper. "I know very well what I mean." "But we don't." "Well, Pen has quarrelled with him before." "With the captain?" "Yes, the dog-captain--it's all one." The sailors looked at one another, afraid to say anything. "Man or dog," muttered Pen, "I declare that that animal will have his account one of these days." "Come, Clifton," asked Bolton seriously, "you don't mean to say that you believe the dog is the real captain?" "Indeed I do," answered Clifton with conviction. "If you noticed things like I do, you would have noticed what a queer beast it is." "Well, tell us what you've noticed." "Haven't you noticed the way he walks on the poop with such an air of authority, looking up at the sails as if he were on watch?" "That's true enough," added Gripper, "and one evening I actually found him with his paws on the paddle-wheel." "You don't mean it!" said Bolton. "And now what do you think he does but go for a walk on the ice-fields, minding neither the bears nor the cold?" "That's true enough," said Bolton. "Do you ever see that 'ere animal, like an honest dog, seek men's company, sneak about the kitchen, and set his eyes on Mr. Strong when's he taking something good to the commander? Don't you hear him in the night when he goes away two or three miles from the vessel, howling fit to make your blood run cold, as if it weren't easy enough to feel that sensation in such a temperature as this? Again, have you ever seen him feed? He takes nothing from any one. His food is always untouched and unless a secret hand feeds him on board, I may say that he lives without eating, and if he's not unearthly, I'm a fool!" "Upon my word," said Bell, the carpenter, who had heard all Clifton's reasoning, "I shouldn't be surprised if such was the case." The other sailors were silenced.