Perhaps they hoped that she might go to the bottom, being heavily insured.

If so, the Fates did not disappoint them.
The captain, named Astley, was a jovial person who held every kind of certificate.

He seemed so extraordinarily able at his business that personally I suspected him of having made mistakes in the course of his career, not unconnected with the worship of Bacchus.

In this I believe I was right; otherwise a man of such attainments would have been commanding something bigger than a private yacht.

The first mate, Jacobsen, was a melancholy Dane, a spiritualist who played the concertina, and seemed to be able to do without sleep.