"Mr. Green, may the Lord forgive me, but I just hate that Spiller with an unholy hatred. Every time he gets a show he brags he's run right over where I located my rocks, and not only that, but criss-cross in the latitude where they might be. And he set about that he'd herring-boned a course on the chart on the longitude, going back and forth on it like a dog in a turnip field. So now he'll be up here again to have another shy for it. If he saw 'em, he'd swear he never. And why he hates me so I can't tell, unless it was I did my duty once, and let him know what a God-fearing man thought of a blasphemer." Green nodded. "That's likely it, sir." "So it is, so it is," cried Banks pensively; "he has no grace in him, and he set it about, I know, that I soak at sea if I'm sober ashore. He said my rocks were delirium tremens; and I'm a discredited man, wounded in a tender spot." It was just four bells in the forenoon watch then, and soon after they snugged her down, as the wind was very heavy in puffs and the sky low and dark. Just before eight bells Green spotted a vessel on the starboard bow, and called the old man. He came on deck like a whiteheaded Jack-in-the-Box. "Keep her away," he cried. "I'll bet she's the _Palembang_. Shake out them reefs and hoist the main-t'gall'n's'l again." His grammar failed in excitement. "We're overhauling her hand over hand, anyhow," suggested Green. "If I can pass him going two foot for his one, I'd run the _Simoom_ under," screamed the skipper. "And when we come up with him, if my voice in a trumpet can carry, I'll tell him what I think of him. He thinks I'm soft because I sing hymns on Sunday. I'll let him know before I sang hymns I was the biggest tough on the Australian coast. God's truth I was! And I wish I was now--oh, how I wish it, and him ashore with me!" And Green believed it, because he had to! There was something in the old man's eye as he walked to and fro, an unregenerate blood-thirsty snap, that was very convincing. So the reefs were shaken out of the topsails, and even that did not satisfy the skipper. "I'll let him know that a saved and repentant Christian isn't necessary a worm," said Banks. "Mr. Green, set the mainsail!" The _Simoom_ was snoring through it now, and Green stared. "What she can't carry she may drag," said the skipper, with flashing eyes. And the _Simoom_ lost her courtesy with the sea under the influence of the mainsail, for the monsoon was a stiff one. She shouldered the Indian Ocean aside like a policeman shoving through a crowd; she scooped up tons of it as a scraper team scoops sand, and ran at any extra sea like a bull at a hedge. The men were under the break of the t'gallant foc'sle, sheltering from the cataract. They knew the _Palembang_ was ahead, and were as eager as the skipper to overhaul her. Through the bos'on and his mate it had leaked out that the old man was keen for a palaver with Spiller.