388 DOWN RIVER TO DUDINKA 



was a pleasure to converse ; he was also a thorough 

 Englishman. With the exception of the Yankee, I 

 suppose John Bull is the 'cutest man in the world, but 

 unfortunately he is too well aware of the fact, and relies 

 implicitly upon his fertility of resource to get safely out 

 of any scrape into which he may fall. He takes little 

 thought for the morrow, but goes on blundering and 

 extricating himself from the effects of his blunders with a 

 perseverance and ingenuity truly wonderful. But all 

 this means hard work for those under his authority. 

 Captain Wiggins had also minor faults which increased 

 his unpopularity ; he was apt to form rash judgments, 

 and consequently was for ever altering his opinions and 

 changing his plans. No one saw this more clearly or 

 criticised it more severely than the crew under him. But 

 the captain had another fault of still deeper dye in the 

 eyes of an English tar he was a teetotaler and worked 

 his ship upon teetotal principles. In my opinion this 

 was the fountain-head of all his difficulties. After four- 

 and-twenty hours' hard work, a glass of honest grog 

 would, more than anything else in the world, have 

 cheered their drooping spirits, revived their fainting pluck, 

 and cemented the camaraderie that ought to subsist 

 between a captain and his men, especially upon expedi- 

 tions involving such rare difficulties. Nevertheless my 

 sympathies went rather with the captain than with his 

 crew : the latter, when he appeared unjust, should have 

 considered how much allowance ought to be made for a 

 man who had seen his pet schemes frustrated, and his 

 ship lost. The captain was suffering from a kind of 

 monomania that he had been checkmated by a secret 

 conspiracy, but I could not detect any evidence that such 

 was the case : if it were, then certainly the winds and 

 the waves were among the conspirators. 



