After waiting a moment, Mr. Burns motioned the crew to leave the cabin, but he detained the two eldest men to stay with the captain while he went on deck with his sextant to “take the sun.”  It was getting toward noon and he was anxious to obtain a good observation for latitude.  When he returned below to put his sextant away he found that the two men had retreated out into the lobby.  Through the open door he had a view of the captain lying easy against the pillows.  He had “passed away” while Mr. Burns was taking this observation.  As near noon as possible.  He had hardly changed his position.

Mr. Burns sighed, glanced at me inquisitively, as much as to say, “Aren’t you going yet?” and then turned his thoughts from his new captain back to the old, who, being dead, had no authority, was not in anybody’s way, and was much easier to deal with.

Mr. Burns dealt with him at some length.  He was a peculiar man—­of sixty-five about—­iron gray, hard-faced, obstinate, and uncommunicative.  He used to keep the ship loafing at sea for inscrutable reasons.  Would come on deck at night sometimes, take some sail off her, God only knows why or wherefore, then go below, shut himself up in his cabin, and play on the violin for hours—­till daybreak perhaps.  In fact, he spent most of his time day or night playing the violin.  That was when the fit took him.  Very loud, too.

It came to this, that Mr. Burns mustered his courage one day and remonstrated earnestly with the captain.  Neither he nor the second mate could get a wink of sleep in their watches below for the noise. . . .  And how could they be expected to keep awake while on duty?  He pleaded.  The answer of that stern man was that if he and the second mate didn’t like the noise, they were welcome to pack up their traps and walk over the side.  When this alternative was offered the ship happened to be 600 miles from the nearest land.

Mr. Burns at this point looked at me with an air of curiosity.  I began to think that my predecessor was a remarkably peculiar old man.

But I had to hear stranger things yet.  It came out that this stern, grim, wind-tanned, rough, sea-salted, taciturn sailor of sixty-five was not only an artist, but a lover as well.  In Haiphong, when they got there after a course of most unprofitable peregrinations (during which the ship was nearly lost twice), he got himself, in Mr. Burns’ own words, “mixed up” with some woman.  Mr. Burns had had no personal knowledge of that affair, but positive evidence of it existed in the shape of a photograph taken in Haiphong.  Mr. Burns found it in one of the drawers in the captain’s room.