"Not only have you given way to that cursed habit of drink, but you have also, I have perceived--for I've had my eye upon you when you have little known it--exercised your authority over the crew in a most unmanly and tyrannical fashion.

Now, I have always prided myself on the fact of my ship being a comfortable one, and I have never found a hand who has sailed with me once objecting to ship for a second voyage if I wanted him.

This I have achieved by treating the men as I would wish to be treated myself, and not by bullying and hazing them unnecessarily as you have done repeatedly, especially this afternoon when you relieved the port watch." The captain paused here a moment, and I declare I felt quite ashamed for Davis being thus spoken to before all the men; but he did not seem to mind it much, for he began to resume his old bumptious manner, shrugging his shoulders in a careless way and glaring round at the listeners as if he would have liked to eat them.
"I was drunk then," was all he said, however, in extenuation of the last offence with which the captain had charged him.
"That is no excuse for your conduct," replied Captain Miles; "in my opinion it rather puts it in a worse light.

I have nothing further to add, save that I deeply regret ever having promoted you from your station forwards.

You are a good sailor, I'll say that for you, but you haven't got the sort of stuff in you that officers are made of! The only thing I can now do, to atone for my error of judgment in mistaking my man, is to send you back again to your old place in the fo'c's'le, where I think you'll find yourself far more at home than you were on the poop.