'
"'I'm sorry,' answered Macnaughten, very quiet, after a moment's
thought,--'I am very sorry to tell you before your crew and
passengers what, with a ship under me, I should have called you aft
and below to hear in private. But if you ever use that tone with me
again, Mr. Grimalson, I shall take _your_ temperature with my
revolver. And if you dare to disobey my smallest order, as you
deliberately did just now, I shall transfer you to this boat and clap
you in irons. For it seems to me I have to explain to you what the
others,--crew and passengers alike--know by the light of common
sense: that until God's mercy delivers us my least word is the Ten
Commandments rolled into one, we being where a hand's turn is either
a hair's-breadth or broad as the Pacific. . . . Now cast off, and set
your behaviour by No. 1 boat, where Mr. Ingpen has come up to wind
and is waiting for us. . . . A cable's length on the port, and level
with us--that's the order, and you'll watch it until I give the next.
You have lost us twenty minutes. Happen _that_ might turn out the
hair's breadth I was speaking of--the difference between life and
death--and the whole Pacific ain't wider.
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