on deck.  You’ve cost me my fore-royal already,’ says he; ’and if you carry on, you’ll have the three sticks out of her.’  That was old man Green’s idea of supporting officers.  But you wait a bit; the cream’s coming.  We made Melbourne right enough, and the old man said:  ’Mr. Nares, you and me don’t draw together.  You’re a first-rate seaman, no mistake of that; but you’re the most disagreeable man I ever sailed with; and your language and your conduct to the crew I cannot stomach.  I guess we’ll separate.’  I didn’t care about the berth, you may be sure; but I felt kind of mean; and if he made one kind of stink, I thought I could make another.  So I said I would go ashore and see how things stood; went, found I was all right, and came aboard again on the top rail.—­’Are you getting your traps together, Mr. Nares?’ says the old man.—­’No,’ says I, ’I don’t know as we’ll separate much before ’Frisco; at least,’ I said, ’it’s a point for your consideration.  I’m very willing to say good-by to the Maria, but I don’t know whether you’ll care to start me out with three months’ wages.’  He got his money-box right away.  ‘My son,’ says he, ‘I think it cheap at the money.’  He had me there.”

It was a singular tale for a man to tell of himself; above all, in the midst of our discussion; but it was quite in character for Nares.  I never made a good hit in our disputes, I never justly resented any act or speech of his, but what I found it long after carefully posted in his day-book and reckoned (here was the man’s oddity) to my credit.  It was the same with his father, whom he had hated; he would give a sketch of the old fellow, frank and credible, and yet so honestly touched that it was charming.  I have never met a man so strangely constituted:  to possess a reason of the most equal justice, to have his nerves at the same time quivering with petty spite, and to act upon the nerves and not the reason.

A kindred wonder in my eyes was the nature of his courage.  There was never a braver man:  he went out to welcome danger; an emergency (came it never so sudden) strung him like a tonic.  And yet, upon the other hand, I have known none so nervous, so oppressed with possibilities, looking upon the world at large, and the life of a sailor in particular, with so constant and haggard a consideration of the ugly chances.  All his courage was in blood, not merely cold, but icy with reasoned apprehension.  He would lay our little craft rail under, and “hang on” in a squall, until I gave myself up for lost, and the men were rushing to their stations of their own accord.  “There,” he would say, “I guess there’s not a man on board would have hung on as long as I did that time; they’ll have to give up thinking me no schooner sailor.  I guess I can shave just as near capsizing as any other captain of this vessel, drunk or sober.”  And then he would fall to repining and wishing himself well out of the enterprise, and dilate on the peril of the seas, the particular dangers of the schooner