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Updated: June 19, 2025
The "navigation," so far as we were concerned, was a mere flourish of the prospectus; and his qualifications as a teacher of English began and ended with an enthusiasm for Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas." Such was Captain Branscome: and, such as he was, he kept the school running on days when Stimcoe was merely drunk and incapable. He ever treated Mrs.
"Good Lord!" he repeated quietly, and, linking his hands under his coat-tails, strode twice backwards and forwards across the room. Captain Coffin looked up from his charts and stared at him, and I, too, stared, waiting in the semi-darkness beyond the lamp's circle. "Good Lord!" said Captain Branscome for the third time. "And it's Saturday, too! You'll excuse me a moment."
He charged me to say if he did not happen to run against you as he was returning the cockboat that he would be at the creek-head punctually at nine-thirty to await us." Two hours later Captain Branscome sent word for me to attend him in his cabin.
"'Yes, sir. I have walked all the way from Falmouth, and without a companion. "'Look here, my friend, he said, after seeming to ponder for a moment, 'if you mean ill, you must have altered strangely from the Captain Branscome I used to know, and if you mean well you have timed your visit almost as strangely. He paused again.
"It's for you," she announced, coming to a standstill under the window and speaking up to me after a curt nod towards Captain Branscome "from Miss Plinlimmon; and you'd best come down and hear what it says, for it's serious." I should here explain that Mr. and Mrs. Stimcoe made a practice of reading all letters received or despatched by us. It was a part of the system.
But even against Miss Belcher I had a card to play. "Captain Branscome may be an excellent leader," I would say; "but I beg you to remember that you gave me no vote in electing him. I will obey any leader I have my share in choosing, but until then I stand out." And I had an inkling that, though the public voice would be against me, I should establish my claim to be taken into any future counsels.
"I thank you, ma'am." Captain Branscome bowed to her gravely. "I will not deny that the Major's words gave me pleasure for the moment. He, for his part, appeared to be quite another man. 'Twas as if between leaving me and returning to the summer-house a load had been lifted from his mind.
"I've been away on a holiday. Nothing wrong with you at all?" he asked. I could not understand Captain Branscome. Why on earth should he be troubling himself about my state of health? "Nothing happened to upset you?" he asked. I looked down at him sharply.
His one assistant, who figured in the prospectus as "Teacher of English, the Mathematics, and Navigation," was a retired packet-captain, Branscome by name, but known among us as Captain Gamey, by reason of an injured leg.
God forgive me, ladies!" Captain Branscome put up a hand to cover his brow. "The very telling of it degrades me over again; but I came here to make a clean breast, and there is no other way. I had cross-examined Harry about the Major and his habits not always allowing to myself why I asked him many trivial questions. And then suddenly the temptation came to a head.
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