I was loth to go, and that's the truth, Captain Marlow--I couldn't stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; we never know what a man is made of.

He had been promoted over too many heads, not counting my own, and he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing but by the way he said 'Good morning.' I never addressed him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as much as I could do to keep a civil tongue in my head." (He flattered himself there.

I often wondered how Brierly could put up with his manners for more than half a voyage.) "I've a wife and children," he went on, "and I had been ten years in the Company, always expecting the next command--more fool I.
Says he, just like this: 'Come in here, Mr.Jones,' in that swagger voice of his--'Come in here, Mr.Jones.' In I went.

'We'll lay down her position,' says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of dividers in hand.
By the standing orders, the officer going off duty would have done that at the end of his watch.

However, I said nothing, and looked on while he marked off the ship's position with a tiny cross and wrote the date and the time.