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"I'll have it out of him! Or he'll jump overboard! You hear me? Where's that bosun?"

"Mr. Wellard hasn't finished testing the glasses, sir" said Bush in one last feeble attempt to postpone the issue.

"Nor will he" said the captain.

Here came the bosun hurrying aft on his short legs, his two mates striding behind him.

"Mr. Booth!" said the captain; his mood had changed again and the mirthless smile was back on his lips. "Take that miscreant. Justice demands that he be dealt with further. Another dozen from your cane, properly applied. Another dozen, and he'll coo like a dove."

"Aye aye, sir" said the bosun, but he hesitated.

It was a momentary tableau: the captain with his flapping coat; the bosun looking appealingly at Bush and the burly bosun's mates standing like huge statues behind him; the helmsman apparently imperturbable while all this went on round him, handling the wheel and glancing up at the topsails; and the wretched boy beside the binnacle--all this under the grey sky, with the grey sea tossing about them and stretching as far as the pitiless horizon.