"You think yourselves a fine lot of chaps," said the captain fiercely, "but my opinion of you is that you are a scaly crowd of wharf-rats, and all your relations of both sexes are no better than they should be. So look here, you swine, I'll have you know I'm Captain Joseph Prowse, and the man that gives any slack jaw to any officer of mine gives it to me. And the man that gives it to me will wish he was dead before he sees Liverpool. That's me. I'm Captain Joseph Prowse, so I am, and any crew under me has got to know it. I'm king here, and I'll wade in blood before I get off my throne. Mr. Watts, put this crawling lot to holy stoning the deck!" And Captain Joseph Prowse rejoined his scientific passengers. "All crews is the same, gentlemen," he said thickly; "there's something deep and dark in the nature of things as makes 'em so. Those that do the rough work on board ships are just so necessarily, and if I was to ship a crew of angels, though they might be handy for going aloft, they'd turn devils by the time they'd ate a pound of beef and biscuit." "Have you ever tried kindness and persuasion?" asked the meteorologist. The captain looked him up and down. "Ever tried it!" he ejaculated scornfully; "'ave I ever tried anything else? It's kindness to sailormen to let 'em know who's boss. Spare the belayin'-pin and the 'andspike and you'll spoil the sailor. Oh, Solomon know'd his business when he used them words. He didn't sail to Ophir for nothin'." "But, Captain Prowse," said the meek gentleman, whose great subject was cannibalism, "isn't it very unpleasant work rubbing the decks with stones this cold weather?" "Unpleasant!" said the skipper, "and what do you think? Was I proposin' to reward 'em?" "I suppose not," said the ethnologist, "but I'm sure it's awful work. I could never do it." Captain Prowse snorted. "Oh yes, you could, if you was in my crew," he remarked. "If one of you gents was captain, you'd find this crowd couldn't do nothing but sit in the foc'sle and drink 'ot coffee. It's all accordin' where you are, and what kind of a man's on top." "In other words, circumstance creates character," said the statistician. "That's a ridiculous exaggeration," said the authority on heredity. "A man is what he is born." Captain Joseph Prowse laughed scornfully. "Not he--he's what I makes of him, and if you gents was under me I'd make you sailors long afore you suspected it. By the way, could you tell me what branch of science an 'erbalist belongs to?" And the conversation followed more pleasant lines. The _Nemagosenda_, although little better than a tramp in her appearance, could do her ten knots an hour on less than twenty tons of coal a day, and she soon got out to the Banks, where the men of science discussed fishing, and the colour of sea-water, and icebergs. "Yes," said the geologist, "an iceberg swims on an average seven-eighths below and an eighth above."