We anchored that evening, and the pilot went ashore.  Lovely as the day had been, we were (for some mysterious reason) more tired at the end of it than on days when we had been working three times as hard.  This, with Dennis, invariably led to mischief, and with Alister to intolerance.  The phase was quite familiar to me now, and I knew it was coming on when they would talk about the pilot.  That the pilot was admirably skilful in his trade, and that he was a most comical-looking specimen of humanity, were obvious facts.  I quite agreed with both Alister and Dennis, but that, unfortunately, did not make them agree with each other.  Not that Dennis contradicted Alister (he pretended to be afraid to do so), but he made comments that were highly aggravating.  He did not attempt to deny that it was “a gran’ sight to see ony man do his wark weel,” or that the African negro shared with us “our common humanity and our immortal hopes,” but he introduced the quite irrelevant question of whether it was not a loss to the Presbyterian Ministry that Alister had gone to sea.  He warmly allowed that the pilot probably had his feelings, and added that even he had his; that the Hat tried them, but that the Feet were “altogether too many for them intirely.”  He received the information that the pilot’s feet were “as his Creator made them,” in respectful silence, and a few minutes afterwards asked me if I was aware of the “curious fact in physiology,” that it took a surgical operation to get a joke through a Scotchman’s brain-pan.

I was feeling all-overish and rather cross myself towards evening, and found Alister’s cantankerousness and Dennis O’Moore’s chaff almost equally tiresome.  To make matters worse, I perceived that Dennis was now so on edge, that to catch sight of the black pilot made him really hysterical, and the distracting thing was, that either because I was done up, or because such folly is far more contagious than any amount of wisdom, I began to get quite as bad, and Alister’s disgust only made me worse.  I unfeignedly dreaded the approach of that black hat and those triangular feet, for they made me giggle in spite of myself, and I knew a ship’s rules far too well not to know how fearful would be the result of any public exhibition of disrespect.

However, we three were not always together, and we had been apart a good bit when we met (as ill-luck would have it) at the moment when the pilot’s boat was just alongside, ready for his departure.

“What’s the boat for?” asked Alister, who had been below.

“And who would it be for,” replied Dennis, “but the gentleman in the black hat?  Alister, dear! what’s the reason I can’t tread on a nigger’s heels without treading on your toes?”

“Hush!” cried I, in torment, “he’s coming.”

We stood at attention, but never can I forget the agony of the next few minutes.  That hat, that face, those flat black feet, that strut, that smile.  I felt a sob of laughter beginning somewhere about my waist-belt, and yet my heart ached with fear for Dennis.  Oh, if only His Magnificence would move a little quicker, and let us have it over!