OUR BOS’N
The bos’n of an English ship usually has eight hours or more below, and
the best part of four watches on deck. This enables him to walk around
after the men and take charge during the time they are at work and the
navigator is unable to leave the poop or quarter-deck. Yankee bos’ns, or
fourth mates, as we used to call them, were distinguished by a rough,
strong voice made raucous by hard usage. Yelling and swearing at
delinquent mariners, as the shore folk put it, was supposed to be their
principal occupation, and to a certain extent the shore folk were right.
But Richards was not noisy. Neither did he have the rough voice of the
man-o’-war bos’n. He was as gentle as any shore-bred person, and even
while he had served as second mate under me, he had never been anything
but “Old” Richards,--old because he was so quiet.
When he took in hand the crew of that ship, it made me smile to think of
him tackling men like Bill, Jones, or myself. Yet there he was over us,
and it soon began to look like Hawkson knew what he was about when he
put him in charge.
In the first place he had been used to discipline. He had served on a
war-ship for so long that he seemed to know just what to do to get men
to work without getting afoul of them.
There is an art in this. It is born in some, cultivated in others, but
absolutely impossible to define in a way that might be useful to the
great majority, for it is a mixture of so many qualities, so many
different freaks and phases of temperament, and generally so dependent
upon chance for its establishment, that it must be dealt with only as a
peculiarity happening in human beings at remote intervals.
Richards had the one necessary quality to begin with, and that was a
really kind disposition under his silent exterior. There was nothing
offensive in him, and, while he never seemed to attract any one, he did
not repel them. Magnetism he possessed in abundance, but this quality is
of small use among men who have to be made to do things which often
result in death and always in discomfort.
Often he would sit and listen to the arguments of the men, and they
would sometimes appeal to him as judge, because he was so quiet and
always gave them an answer they could understand.
“What makes ye sa keen fer carryin’ on discipline, friend Richards?”
asked Martin, good-humouredly, one evening as the watch sat or lounged
about the forecastle scuttle waiting to be called.
“It’s not your country’s ship; why d’ye care? Now a war-ship an’ a
patriot I kin understand. I was a patriot mysel’.”
“I fou’t for England,” said big Jones, “but that ware different.”
“You’d have fought for China just as quick,” said the bos’n, “if any men
you knew were going out to fight. It’s the same aboard a fighting craft
as it is here. I’ve seen clerks in the shipping-houses, that couldn’t
tell a cutlass from a pike, go crazy to fight when the war broke out.
They liked to be called ‘patriots,’ too. All men like to fight if the
whole crowd go in. It’s excitement and vanity. You’ll be more of a
patriot and less a fighting man after you get ashore to stay.”
“Ay, that he will,” said Tim, the American. “He’s too ready for fight,
an’ a bit o’ discipline will do him good.”
“Ah, hark ye at the bit o’ a man,” sneered Martin. “One might think he
feared a little fracas, hey?” and he leered at the small sailor, who
looked him squarely in the eyes and swore at him, for a bullying Scot he
was.
Somehow, Richards never made trouble between men. They rarely took
offence at his answers, and he never struck one.
To him the striking of a man lowered him at once. If the man was an
equal and had any self-respect, it was necessary to go further into the
matter always, he explained. If he had not enough self-respect to fight
his smiter to the last limit, then he was taking whatever chance the
fellow had of ever becoming a man, for no man, he held, could be a
person of spirit and courage and allow another to strike him. It might
work well in religious congregations, where men were tricky and
desperately low and mean, stooping to any vile revenge, but among men at
sea upon a ship deck it was different. To assault a man weaker than
himself was almost as bad in his eyes as assaulting a girl. In either
case, the victim’s self-respect was lost, and the person consequently
liable to be ruined. It would require a nice adjustment, he claimed, to
prevent murder. He very plainly stated that, if Martin, Jones, or any
one of the heavy fellows who might be tempted to try accounts with him
at some disliked order, should so far forget the discipline of the ship
and make a fight with him, he would be bound by all law and precedent,
as upon a man-of-war, to kill him. The turning of the smitten cheek to
the offender was not to be taken literally. It meant a man should show
due forbearance before entering into a fracas, which would certainly end
fatally for one or the other.
This doctrine might not appeal to the landsman, and from a certain point
of view it might appear unchristian. But, if there was ever a man who
practised kindness toward his fellow men, that man was the bos’n of the
old pirate barque. He was honest.
I had found that on former cruises to heathen islands and countries, the
heathen were usually all right until some of the professed Christians
appeared to convert them. Afterward the histories of these places were
of a somewhat sinister character, and, if ever there was an exception to
prove the rule, I had never heard tell of it. Every so-called Christian
country had allowed and advanced all kinds of oppression among natives.
Whether this was for their spiritual welfare or not, it is not necessary
to inquire, the fact was always the same. Therefore, I was interested in
our future course, but, from the steady discipline and forbearance of
the officers, expected to see very little of the usual kind of
conversion. Every ship full of canting religionists came home full of
black murder and worse. There was much more to be expected from a vessel
whose after-guard stood for easy ship in regard to these matters.
Sometimes, in the evening dog-watches, Richards would even take the
liberty of coming into the forecastle and joining in the talk, or
sitting upon the forecastle head in the warm wind and listening to a
chanty roared out by Martin or some one who had served in the Eastern
trade-ships. One of the favourite songs, made up from different snatches
heard either upon the men-of-war or along the dock-ends of Liverpool,
ran something like this:
“We had come to anchor fine, sir,
In a vessel o’ the line, sir,
We had cruised for five years steady
Upon the Southern Seas--
When a boat from off the shore, sir,
Brought a lady out aboard, sir,
She was black as soot an’ mud, sir,
An’ she smelled o’ oil an’ grease--”
Then all hands would roar out with will the refrain, pointing to the
bos’n:
“Then up jumped the bos’n, up jumped the crew,
The first mate, second mate, the cook and steward too--
But the captain swore he’d have her,
An’ the mate ’e tried to grab her,
She couldn’t have ’em all, sir--
What could the lady do?”
Sometimes the gentlemen from aft would come forward and lend a hand with
some new version of an old song, but more often they were content to
listen from the sacred precincts of the quarter-deck.
Old Howard never interfered with hilarity, but rather encouraged it. I
wondered at this, but remembered the cruise had only just begun. I had
seen captains encourage men before. Sometimes it held a more sinister
meaning than simple delight at their pleasure.