In shipping circles opinion was divided between the master of the _Simoom_ and the master of the _Palembang_. And it being the fashion of the sailorman, or, for that matter, of human-kind in general, to decide matters that admit of doubt according to personal prejudice and ancient opinion, there were more on Spiller's side than on Banks's. For one thing, it is the perpetual ambition of all true sons of the ocean to discover something new and have his ship's name tagged on to it, and every one was jealous of Banks. When the _Amphion_ looked for the rocks without success, they threw out dark hints about a dead whale or a tree stump having been seen, and some said "Rum," just as others said "Rats," contemptuously. Others, with a very fine contempt for the Navy, were of opinion that Captain Melville of H.M.S. _Amphion_ considered he owned half the Indian Ocean and all the Arabian Sea, and would be as much put out at finding an unmarked rock or shoal in either as if he slipped upon an old chew on his own quarterdeck. These were on Banks's side, of course. And some who disliked Spiller said they believed in this new set of rocks to annoy him, ending very naturally in holding the opinion they argued for. When old Banks got on the high horse and swore he would not speak again to the disbeliever in the vigia, he meant it, and added details to his statement. "Not if I found him in a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean," he swore excitedly. The quarrel was as bitter as polemic theology. Spiller was a rank atheist, a scorner, a scoffer, a pagan, a heathen. If Banks had written a new creed, he would have begun it: "I believe in the _Simoom_ Rocks to the west of the Maldivhs." He clung to their existence pathetically, and when an impecunious skipper of a storm-disgruntled tramp wanted to borrow a couple of hundred rupees from him, and remarked incidentally that he had seen broken water in the supposed position of the discredited reef, Banks forked out with enthusiasm and took down a lying statement joyfully. But when the _Simoom_ was ready for sea again, that same tramp skipper, who was a wild disgrace to the respectable mystery of the sea, executed a few manoeuvres which let the _Palembang_ get ahead of her. For the tramp (_Julius Cæsar_ was her name) had engines of an obstinate and eccentric character. Sometimes they worked, and sometimes they didn't, and on this particular occasion they refused to be reversed at any price. As the _Julius Cæsar_ wouldn't go astern, her captain shoved her at the crowded shipping ahead and put her through, whooping on the bridge like a maniac. He grazed three other steamers, took a bumpkin off a sailing vessel, slipped between two others, and in one last complicated evolution smashed the jibboom of the _Simoom_, brought down her fore-topgall'n'-mast, and escaped to sea in a cyclone of curses of which the calm centre was the _Palembang_. "I'll report you," said Spiller to Banks, when he left Bombay.