CHAPTER V.
On a fine afternoon, some two months after his release from the toils of the sea, Captain Nugent sat in the special parlour of The Goblets.
The old inn offers hospitality to all, but one parlour has by ancient tradition and the exercise of self-restraint and proper feeling been from time immemorial reserved for the elite of the town.
The captain, confident in the security of these unwritten regulations, conversed freely with his peers.

He had been moved to speech by the utter absence of discipline ashore, and from that had wandered to the growing evil of revolutionary ideas at sea.

His remarks were much applauded, and two brother-captains listened with grave respect to a disquisition on the wrongs of shipmasters ensuing on the fancied rights of sailor men, the only discordant note being struck by the harbour-master, a man whose ideas had probably been insidiously sapped by a long residence ashore.
"A man before the mast," said the latter, fortifying his moral courage with whisky, "is a human being." "Nobody denies it," said Captain Nugent, looking round.
One captain agreed with him.
"Why don't they act like it, then ?" demanded the other.
Nugent and the first captain, struck by the re-mark, thought they had perhaps been too hasty in their admission, and waited for number two to continue.

They eyed him with silent encouragement.
"Why don't they act like it, then ?" repeated number two, who, being a man of few ideas, was not disposed to waste them.
Captain Nugent and his friend turned to the harbour-master to see how he would meet this poser.
"They mostly do," he replied, sturdily.

"Treat a seaman well, and he'll treat you well." This was rank heresy, and moreover seemed to imply something.