/" WANT TO BE A CUB-PILOT. **
longed to acquire the least trifle of notice from tibe big stormy
mate, and I was on the alert for an opportunity to do him a service
to that end. It came at last. The riotous powwow of setting a spar
was going on down on the forecastle, and I went down there and
stood around in the way—or mostly skipping out of it—till the mate
suddenly roared a general order for somebody to bring him a capstan
bar. I sprang to his side and said : * Tell me where it is—I'll fetch
it!'
If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the
Emperor of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded
than the mate was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and
stared down at me. It took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed
remains together again. Then he said imprassively : * Well, if this
don't beat hell!' and turned to his work with the air of a man who
had been confronted with a problem too abstruse for solution.
I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of the day. I did
not go to dinner; I stayed away from supper until everybody else
had finished. I did not feel so much like a member of the boat's
family now as before. However, my spirits returned, in instalments,
as we pursued our way down the river. I was soriy I hated the mate
so, because it was not in (young) human nature not to admire him.
He was huge and muscular, his face was bearded and whiskered all
over; he had a red woman and a blue woman tattooed on his right
arm,—one on each side of a blue anchor with a red rope to it j and in
the matter of profanity he was sublime. When he was getting out
cargo at a landing, I was always where I could see and hear. He
felt all the majesty of his great position, and made the world feel it,
too. When he gave even the simplest order, he discharged it like a
blast of lightning, and sent a long, reverberating peal of profanity
thundering after it. I could not help contrasting the way in which
the average landsman would give an order, with the mate's way of
doing it. If the landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot
farther forward, he would probably say : * James, or William, one of
you push that plank forward, please ; * but put the mate in his place
and he would roar out: «Here, now, start that gang-plank forward !
Lively, now 1 What 're you about! Snatch it \ snatch it! There !
there 1 Aft again ! aft again! don't you hear me ? Dash, it to dash I