Panache was letting Louise Narron beat him, and then beating her back. Panache was telling Toy that she was his, and nobody else's, and somehow arranging for her to sail on the Arcadia with him, away from Laurence. Panache was taking control of the Arcadia in the middle of this catastrophic storm, and proving his seamanship and his style.
He fought his way forward and slammed open the door of the wheelhouse. Sir Peregrine was sitting down now, and unsteadily attempting to light his pipe. The helmsman was doggedly holding the liner's course dead ahead, even though he was blinded by the salt on the windows, and obviously seasick. Dick Charles was there, too-on Sir Peregrine's instructions-but all he was doing was clinging on to the handrail and looking miserable.
Rudyard banged the wheelhouse door shut behind him, brushed the spray from his shoulders, and approached Sir Peregrine in three short steps. Sir Peregrine said, with a wry twitch of his lips, "You're confined to your quarters, Mr. Philips. Or am I mistaken?"
"Not mistaken, sir," said Rudyard. "Not in that matter, anyway."
"Aha," replied Sir Peregrine, turning sideways in his seat and sucking noisily at his meerschaum. "So I am to take it that I am mistaken in some other respect?"
"Your course, sir. You have to alter your course."
"Mr. Peel thought that, too. Would it be naive of me to think that Mr. Peel has put you up to this?"
"I have not been put up to anything by anybody, sir. But we must change course, or the Arcadia will be seriously damaged."
Sir Peregrine took his pipe from his mouth and peered at it closely, as if he found it difficult to focus. "Well, Mr. Philips, that's your opinion. But my opinion is that unless we face these waves head-on, we're liable to lose a great deal more than a few feet of railing."
"Sir Peregrine—"
The captain stared at him beadily. "You are under arrest, Mr. Philips, for your wanton handling of this steamer when she left Irish territorial waters. Simply by coming up here to the wheelhouse, you have committed an act of insubordination which could lead to your dismissal from the company. Well, because you're a good sailor, and because you have the Aurora to look after, and because I'm not a vindictive man, I'll forget this intrusion, and try to accept it in the spirit in which I hope it was intended. But unless you confine yourself to your quarters at once, and stop this interfering in my management of the ship, I shall have to make a full report on your conduct and recommend your dismissal."
"You're drunk," said Rudyard. "Look at you—you're drunk!"
Sir Peregrine put down his pipe. "When drunk," he said, "I am still ten times more proficient at handling a ship than you are when you're sober. Now get out of here before you make a greater fool of yourself than you already have."
Rudyard stood his ground, his hands by his sides, his brain chasing itself under his short back-and-sides like a mad dog.
"I'm taking over command, sir," he said.
Sir Peregrine struck a match and passed it backwards and forwards over his Three Nuns tobacco. At last the leaf lit up, and he began to puff bright blue smoke out of the side of his mouth with a noisy smacking sound.
"Sorry," he said to Rudyard, shaking out his match. "Did you say something?"
Rudyard found that he was shaking. He didn't want to shake. He didn't even think that he was frightened. But be suddenly realised what an impossible situation he was in. Louise Narron had seemed to make it a requirement of their continuing affair that he should stalk forward to the wheelhouse and prove himself a hero. What was more, he knew that if he couldn't impress Louise Narron, he would never be able to win back Toy. Yet, as a captain in his own right, and the First Officer on board the Arcadia, he knew that the price of his heroism could well be the finish of his entire seagoing career. To announce to Sir Peregrine "I'm taking over command, sir," was a prima facie act of mutiny, for which he could be liable to criminal charges, and even hanging. The Arcadia, after all, was a small but elegant fragment of the British Isles, and for him to usurp Sir Peregrine's authority was verging on treason against His Majesty. There would be leading articles in The Daily Telegraph, his family would be humiliated, and if he wasn't executed, he would be fined and imprisoned and ruined.
Rudyard was a straightforward man, not good at subtleties, but he was subtle enough to realise that Sir Peregrine's deafness was feigned, and that by asking, "Did you say something?" he was actually giving Rudyard just one more chance to step back from the yawning chasm of imprisonment and disgrace. And if he was prepared to give a chap that kind of a chance, then maybe he wasn't such a bad old stick after all. And maybe he wasn't wrong about the course on which the Arcadia was heading. Was Rudyard so sure that a forty-five degree slant to the direct onslaught of the waves would really save the ship from foundering?
There was a long pause, during which Sir Peregrine calmly continued to smoke his pipe. But Dick Charles, from the other side of the wheelhouse, pulled a contorted face at Rudyard and shook his head mechanically from side to side, as if to say, Please, for your own sake, don't risk it.
It was then that the wheelhouse door opened again, and Edgar Deacon stepped in, accompanied by Ralph Peel. Both of them were white-faced and dripping with seawater. Edgar took off his sou'wester and slapped it against his coat. He glanced at Rudyard briefly, but then, without any preliminaries, stepped straight up to Sir Peregrine's chair and demanded, "What's going on? Mr. Peel tells me you're steering a dangerous course."
Peregrine did Edgar the courtesy of taking his pipe out of his mouth. But he fastidiously licked his lips before he replied, "Mr. Peel is an officer of comparatively little experience. Most of his commisions have been on vessels of 20,000 tons or less. His idea of what constitutes a dangerous course in a 50,000-ton liner differs considerably from mine. And that is all."
"The front railings have been ripped away. We've lost all kinds of spars and rigging, even the company flag."
Sir Peregrine said, "Yes. You're quite right. But I would rather sustain two or three hundred pounds' worth of superficial damage then lose the entire vessel while steering on an ill-considered course, wouldn't you? To steer aslant to this particular storm would not only would not only lose us several hours' steaming time, but it would unquestionably expose us to the risk of swamping. The wind, as you might have noticed, is variable, and many of the worst waves have been taking us on our port quarter. That means that if we steer to starboard, we stand the risk of taking a wave broadside on, and foundering. So, I have made the decision to keep to our course, and make the best time possible, regardless of the temporary discomfort to our passengers."