“We ought to be moving along a line that’ll cross somewhere northard of New Zealand,” Daughtry guessed to himself, after a hundred stolen glances into the binnacle.  But that was all the information concerning the ship’s navigation he could steal; for Captain Doane took the observations and worked them out, to the exclusion of the mate, and Captain Doane always methodically locked up his chart and log.  That there were heated discussions in the cabin, in which terms of latitude and longitude were bandied back and forth, Daughtry did know; but more than that he could not know, because it was early impressed upon him that the one place for him never to be, at such times of council, was the cabin.  Also, he could not but conclude that these councils were real battles wherein Messrs. Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimahaw screamed at each other and pounded the table at each other, when they were not patiently and most politely interrogating the Ancient Mariner.

“He’s got their goat,” the steward early concluded to himself; but, thereafter, try as he would, he failed to get the Ancient Mariner’s goat.

Charles Stough Greenleaf was the Ancient Mariner’s name.  This, Daughtry got from him, and nothing else did he get save maunderings and ravings about the heat of the longboat and the treasure a fathom deep under the sand.

“There’s some of us plays games, an’ some of us as looks on an’ admires the games they see,” the steward made his bid one day.  “And I’m sure these days lookin’ on at a pretty game.  The more I see it the more I got to admire.”

The Ancient Mariner dreamed back into the steward’s eyes with a blank, unseeing gaze.

“On the Wide Awake all the stewards were young, mere boys,” he murmured.

“Yes, sir,” Daughtry agreed pleasantly.  “From all you say, the Wide Awake, with all its youngsters, was sure some craft.  Not like the crowd of old ’uns on this here hooker.  But I doubt, sir, that them youngsters ever played as clever games as is being played aboard us right now.  I just got to admire the fine way it’s being done, sir.”

“I’ll tell you something,” the Ancient Mariner replied, with such confidential air that almost Daughtry leaned to hear.  “No steward on the Wide Awake could mix a highball in just the way I like, as well as you.  We didn’t know cocktails in those days, but we had sherry and bitters.  A good appetizer, too, a most excellent appetizer.”

“I’ll tell you something more,” he continued, just as it seemed he had finished, and just in time to interrupt Daughtry away from his third attempt to ferret out the true inwardness of the situation on the Mary Turner and of the Ancient Mariner’s part in it.  “It is mighty nigh five bells, and I should be very pleased to have one of your delicious cocktails ere I go down to dine.”

More suspicious than ever of him was Daughtry after this episode.  But, as the days went by, he came more and more to the conclusion that Charles Stough Greenleaf was a senile old man who sincerely believed in the abiding of a buried treasure somewhere in the South Seas.