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Administrative Theories and Management Thought 3rd
Edition R. K. Sapru Digital Instant Download
Author(s): R. K. Sapru
ISBN(s): 9788120347342, 812034734X
Edition: 3
File Details: PDF, 4.71 MB
Year: 2013
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 THE JUDGMENT OF MEN[A]
I had rowed in for fresh beef. The weather was cold, the water
rough and when Wilson asked permission to go up town to get
tobacco, I let him go and made my own way to the ship-chandler's,
where we men of the sea usually bought our supplies and
sometimes spent an hour or two discussing primage freights and
other things pertaining to shipping.
There were two big five-masters lying just outside of us in the
channel and their masters were known to me. One of them had
picked me up at sea from a derelict and the other was Bull Simpson,
well known on the coast. Simpson was much given to
gregariousness. Johnson was companionable, but quiet, and I knew
they would be in Jackson's store that morning, for they would clear
the next day.
The day was in midwinter. The gloomy sky whipped by the
nor'wester showed signs of snow. How one hates snow at sea! The
nasty white stuff making the decks like glass, hiding everything from
view. The harbor was white with the scrape of the cold wind, and
the salt water froze where it struck in spray. Yes, I would go to
Jackson's store. The shipping looked too gloomy to contemplate any
longer. I thought of the frozen fingers handling canvas stiff as tin.
The stove, a ship's bogie, was red hot in the back room. Simpson
was there, long, lean and solemn. So was Johnson there, but he was
smiling, smoking and so glad to be in harbor that it stuck out all over
him. Captain Cone, master of a tramp steamer, sat near and warmed
his fat toes, his pudgy hands red with frost.
"Go back, they're all there," grinned Jackson to me, as I passed the
desk. "Thought you'd gone to sea—sech fine wedder—for gulls—
what? Go back an' set in, Cap; I'll come back for your order
presently."
"Hello, you look cool," said Johnson, smiling up at me from his chair.
"Glad to see you—set in," said Simpson, making room for a chair
near the bogie. "Shake hands with Captain Cone of the Prince Albert
—Cone has a good tea-kettle for this weather—don't you wish you
ran a tramp? Please? No, I didn't hear that last——"
I bowed to the Captain. A captain of a tramp was something new to
us. We seldom had any but sailormen in the group and British
skippers were always looked upon as a rarity. Still they were always
welcome. Cone stuck out his pudgy hand. I squeezed the fat fingers
until he winced and withdrew them. I never cared for pudgy-handed
seamen—just prejudice, a meanness, but it couldn't be helped. We
can't help everything, we must be human, and Cone took it good-
naturedly—was way above such things. He showed it by spitting
voluminously at the bogie and remarking it was very cold to go to
sea.
Simpson didn't like it at all. He showed it, grumbled something about
Yankees and stiff-necked folks, then subsided while I lit up and
gazed complacently at Johnson. We talked of various things until
Cone rose, buttoned his coat and went into the office to fill his order.
Simpson glared at me for a moment.
"What's the use of being so damned short with the Britisher? What's
he done?" he asked.
"It's what he hasn't done I object to," I answered. "Stupid, heavy
brute——"
Captain Cone came back and extended his hand. "Good-by, Simpson
—good-by, gentlemen—hope you'll have better weather of it to-
morrow."
I noticed that he held out his left hand; it was the left hand that was
so pudgy, so fat and soft. His right hand was gloved and the fingers
of the glove were stiff, straight.
"Good day," I said, rising, "and good luck to you." Johnson nodded
also and the stranger withdrew, followed by Jackson who saw him to
the door.
"Wake up," I said to Simpson. "Don't think I meant anything, but
these Britisher tramp skippers are the limit. High ideals! lots of
feeling! Human as a beef and twice as heavy—after dinner. Where
did he blow in from?"
"He came in for coals to take him to Brunswick—he'll load for lumber
there and go back home—hope he'll get a better reception than he
got here—he's a member of the English Masters' Association; you
might have been kind to him," said Simpson.
"Was he the man they fired from the Association last month? Seems
to me I heard of a Cone—seems like he was accused of brutality or
something, lacks humanity—looks like it, anyway," said Johnson.
"Yes, he was fired—yes—by God, he was," snapped Simpson, "and it
was just such judgment that gets lots of good men into trouble.
'Lacked human sentiment'—lacked human sentiment—well, that's a
charge for you! Hell! you fellows get narrower and narrower—I
happen to know Cone, knew him years ago—he was fired for losing
the Champion—'lacked human sentiment,' bah! Oh, now you
remember him, heh?"
"Yes, we remember him—the man who lost a fine ship in collision in
a clear night," said I, with something of a sneer. "But that wasn't the
worst of it——"
"Yes, you read the damned papers—you got a fine idea of it all,"
snapped Simpson. The old seaman turned and spat viciously at the
bogie as if the poor old stove, red-hot, had done him some grievous
wrong. Then he turned scornfully to Johnson.
"You remember the Champion? You know something about her, you
ain't so damned stuck about yourself. I happened to be aboard of
her the day she sailed, talking to Redding, her chief mate—Redding,
that was lost in the Arctic—yes, Redding was as straight as a string—
and he told me the details of that accident after he came from the
hospital—too late. He was nearly a year in the insane ward from a
blow that smashed his head, but he told me about Cone.
"Yes, it was Cone who left his wife—so they said—left her, deserted
her and the children. It was Cone who acted in every disgraceful
way the old women tell about, Cone who raised hell and paid the
devil wherever he went, Cone who only got command of the
Champion after pulling shares and playing the game for all it was
worth—no, don't tell me—don't, I say—I don't want to hear about
what he did. I'll tell you how he lost the ship, and you say you'll
believe anything poor Redding said—so would I. If there was truth in
any man it was in Dan Redding—poor devil."
"Yes," I assented, "Redding was all right."
Simpson scorned to notice me. He talked at Johnson, or rather
talked at me through Johnson, over him, and—Simpson could talk,
talk like an Admiralty lawyer with two noggins of rum under his ribs.
Jackson came in and took Cone's vacated chair. He rubbed his
hands. Cone had been a good buyer, had needed plenty of stuff—
and he got it at the highest rates. Jackson approved of Redding also,
approved of him for the sake of memory—Redding had always paid a
full bill—never asked rake-off, pourboire, "graft," or other money
from him.
"You heard all that stuff about Cone, too," said Simpson, sneeringly
at Jackson; "and I dare say you believe it like a good old woman you
are, but I'll tell you just how he lost the ship—if you believe Redding.
"They cleared at daylight, bound for St. John's—had twenty
passengers first class and about seventy second—no steerage those
days. Redding said the weather was hell and something worse from
the time they dropped the land, and you men know how it is on the
coast in the winter time. The old Champion came across and poked
her nose into the fog bank off Sable Island—bad place? Well, I
reckon it is. Bad because you can't tell where the devil you are and
can't keep any kind of reckoning in that current. That Sable Island
bank is nearly as bad as Hatteras for us windjammers.
"Cone slowed his ship that last morning—according to Redding—
slowed her down to a few knots, made the passengers keep off the
decks in order to have peace and quiet aboard. One old lady didn't
like it at all. She insisted she had a right to go where she pleased
aboard—told the skipper so to his face and dared him to put her
below. Some of the other women folks followed her example—did
Cone do it? Well, he just called his quartermaster and told him to
remove the objectionable old women, told him to carry them below
if necessary—and that square-head did. Yes, sir, he just picked up
the leader and carried her off in his arms while she screamed and
clawed him, calling to the men to save her from the brutal assault.
"Oh, yes, he got a nice name for that. The passengers told how he
acted, told how he brutally made his men remove innocent and
unoffending females—oh, what's the use? He was a brute and they
made it out plain—it was all published in the papers.
"It was along about five o'clock and the sun must have been well
along to the nor'west horizon, tho' of course he couldn't see it in the
fog—that a horn blared out faintly right ahead. The man on lookout
heard it—for it was now quiet on deck—and the siren roared out its
reply. Then he got a faint blow right off his starboard bow, a blow as
if from a small fishing schooner. He kept along blowing regular
blasts, kept along very slow.
"Right out of the setting sun a bit of wind seemed to make. It lifted
the bank enough to show him a four-masted ship standing right into
him not two hundred feet from his bow. She was heeling with the
growing breeze and going about six knots or better with just a white
bone across her forefoot. Cone rang off his engines.
"It is in these moments, you know, that things happen. Had Cone
rang ahead full speed like Chambers did in the old Lawrence, rang
and shoved into her full swing, he would have either gone clear or
cut out enough to give her his stern on the turn and probably not
sink either ship. He kept to the rules by British force of habit of
abiding by them—and, well, the Potomack, under three skysails and
shoving along with four thousand tons of cargo in her, hit him fair
upon the side while he was swinging to port. The ship's jibboom
reached over and drove a hole through the deckhouse first, poked
right through and ripped off his blowoff pipe, letting the steam come
roaring out of her, and then the heavy forefoot sunk like a wedge
fair in her, right in the wake of her engines. It was the worst possible
place to get it—you know that—right in the wake of the engines and
close enough to the engine-room bulkhead to smash it so it was
useless. Then it cut, shore down under the water line, and there he
was with a hole in him big enough to drive in a trolley car, a hole
and nothing but the forward bulkheads to hold him up—no, he was
badly hit, hit right in the vitals, and the roar of the steam told him
plainly that the ship was going to be put to it to float.
"Then came the usual panic.
"Cone tried to stop it, tried to stem the tide of passengers. His
officers were good, but Redding was hit on the head by a block from
the maingaff vang and while Cone was trusting to him to take
charge aft, he set to work forward to get the boats out in ship-shape
and seamanlike order. His second was a new man—Billings—a blue-
nose he knew nothing about, but a good enough fellow to take
charge. He and the third officer stood the crowd back for a time and
got the port boats over.
"You see, it was smooth and there wouldn't have been much trouble,
but the passengers had a grouch against Cone, hated him. The
women thought him a brute and the men had heard so much from
them about his private life, his affairs, his general rascality, they
wouldn't stand it any longer. They rushed it and two were shot, one
fell overboard and another was badly hurt. These were the only
casualties—strange, wasn't it? Only passengers hurt were those who
were trying to save themselves from the brutal and overbearing
Cone.
"The Champion settled quickly by the head, her nose getting well
down. This had the evil tendency of lifting her stern so high that the
boats couldn't be handled easily. It stopped the flow of the sea to a
certain extent, but it was too late to do anything to help that now.
The fireroom force came up, they were literally drowned out, forced
to quit, and the engineers came forward and told of the useless
steam—not enough to run the pumps. Then Cone knew it was get
away while he could.
"Cone stood on the port side of the flying bridge, stood there and
roared out his orders, wondering why Redding didn't respond to the
work cut out aft. He saw no boats going over where Redding should
be tending to them, and when the crowd finally surged forward he
had to let them come, had to let them get into the boats there. Oh,
yes, he was charged with not holding them back, not being able to
command his ship, but man, he had to let them come forward, it
was only the fighting ones who insisted in getting first places and
taking charge that got hurt.
"The Potomack lay to and sent in her boats, sent in four big
whaleboats and one dinghy. The water wasn't rough—any good boat
would live a long time—and Cone let them take off his passengers as
fast as they could. He was well scored for it afterward; they told how
he couldn't do it himself, and if it hadn't been for the Potomack he
would have lost all his passengers.
"When the Champion settled Cone was still standing there on the
bridge, standing there and he knew what it meant to him.
"'You'd better go along, sir,' said Billings, 'we're going in the next
boat.'
"But Cone just looked at him for a minute, just stood there watching
things and saw the last passenger get away.
"'You hound,' the fellow yelled, 'you cowardly rascal—you insulter of
women!'
"You see, passengers get excited in such cases, get to lose their
heads. Cone never even looked at him, never took his eyes from the
settling ship.
"The engineer force had gone, the only men left aboard were the
quartermasters and mates. Cone spoke to Billings.
"'Get Redding and the rest—get in the boat, I'll come along in a
moment.'
"The Champion was settling fast now. The roar of the steam and air
from between decks was deafening. Billings didn't quite get the
words, but he knew he was told to go—and he went. The third
officer found Redding lying with a broken head and dragged him to
the side, lowered him down and started after him. Just as he did
this, there was a ripping noise from below. It was like a tearing sort
of explosion, a rending. Cone had disappeared from the bridge and
they waited no longer but shoved clear. At that instant the Champion
surged ahead, lifted her stern and dropped—she was gone.
"The suction whirled about, sucked the boat first one way and then
another, bringing her right over the foundering ship. Billings saw a
form jammed under the topmast backstay, saw a hand clutching
something white and he reached for it as the topmast went under.
"It was Cone. It was the skipper.
"They hauled him into the boat and he still clutched that thing in his
hand. He had been drawn under, been badly strangled and he was
unconscious, but his hand hold was firm and no one took notice of
what he held. It was the photograph of a woman.
"Billings didn't know anything about him; didn't know but what the
tales told were true—so he took the thing away from him and said
nothing about it; but Redding knew, Redding knew after he saw it—
months afterward when it was shown him—too late to stop the
nasty stories—oh, yes, it was the picture of his wife.
"Of course, Cone was living alone, had many affairs—so they said—
and it would not do to drag a woman into his ugly life. He had gone
into his room to get it—the picture—gone in to get it with that ship
sinking under him, the unsentimental and brutal Cone—oh, well,
what's the use?
"Yes, his hand was jammed between the backstay and the mast and
Billings just got him clear in time—funny, is it? Well, I don't know,
some men wouldn't have been so particular over a photograph,
would have used both their hands to fight clear with—what? But
then, that's what you call sentiment. No, you wouldn't expect it from
Cone, wouldn't expect to find it in a seaman with ruddy cheeks and
quiet manner, soft and a bit fat——"
"No," said Jackson, "you wouldn't expect a thing like that from
Captain Cone—that's right."
"No, you expect sentiment from the thin, poetical, big-eyed, tender
men, the men who slush and slobber it over at all occasions. You
find women looking for it in the tender talkers, the soft-spoken, the
amorous—oh, hell! did you ever see a man who looked the part—
what?"
"I've sometimes had my doubts concerning heroes," said Johnson,
"but they are—the real ones—generally most common-looking, most
quiet and unassuming; but that Cone—well, he is a hard dose to
swallow, and that's a fact."
"Well, treat him decently when he comes back," said Simpson.

Some years later I met Cone at the dinner given by the Manager of
the Southern Fruit Company to the Captains of the West India fleet
who ran the steamers chartered under contract to fill the winter
schedule. There were as usual many British vessels in the trade,
some Norwegian and a few American, including myself.
Cone had passed entirely out of my ken and this time I took his
hand with the feeling that perhaps I had done the man an injustice
by the human judgment passed upon him. He was a very old man
now and his hand was still in a glove to hide the deformity which the
accident had caused. He looked very much the kindly old-time
shipmaster, bright of eye and vigorous to the last. He sat near me
and remained silent during the opening of the somewhat formal
repast. The Manager had been discussing some subject, for he
seemed to wish to follow it at once.
"A thing's either right or wrong," said the Manager didactically, as he
looked over the gathering. He paused for the effect of his words to
be felt. He loved platitudes, although the leading man in his business
and a millionaire. "A thing is either right or wrong," he repeated,
"and a man is either right or wrong. There's a difference between
them as plain as between black and white."
Captain Cone squirmed in his chair. He had listened to this sort of
thing before from the Manager. The Company, the greatest shipping
firm in the whole world, had paid him his salary, given him his liner
and here was the Manager setting forth again against the manner of
trusted employees who should know these self-evident truths. He
interrupted.
"In fifty-five years spent knocking about the world upon every sea,
I've come to a different conclusion," said he quietly.
It was so different from the usual applause, the applause which had
already started and which would follow the Manager's splendid
appreciation of the obvious. Several diners—there were twelve at the
table—looked up quickly and wondered at the Captain.
"What—what do you mean?" asked the Manager softly, amazed at
the interruption. He had been coming to a point where he expected
to hurl a smashing argument against the methods of some men who
handled millions, and here he had been held up by a Captain, an
employee of his Company. There was a silence, awkward, impressive
—and the old seaman felt it, causing him to blush through his
mahogany tan. He had committed himself, and he was essentially a
modest man.
"I don't know exactly how to explain," said the Captain slowly.
"These questions of human analysis are so very subtle, so elusive—I
am only a sailorman after all, and perhaps I see things differently
from the view taken by landsmen. There is much in the point of
view. But it seems that I am still reasonable, still logical—and I am
able to perform my duties even though I'm seventy."
He paused, passed his brown hand across his grizzled forehead,
where the hair still hung thickly. Then he let it drop slowly down
over his beard and his eyes seemed to have an introspective look.
He spoke very slowly and with considerable hesitation as one not
used to the ready flow of language, words every one of which had a
meaning.
"There was a small matter," he continued, "which called my attention
to the human judgment. I don't know how to tell it, but—well, you
remember Jones, Captain Jones, who had an interest in the oil
ships? Yes; well, I was thinking of him.
"Jones was one of the first oil carriers. That was before the Standard
took charge. I had sailed with him as mate long before the war. He
got a great tank ship—lost her. Then came the squeeze of the
Consolidated, then the death of competition—and, well, Jones lost
one thing after another. Froze out. They made him watchman at the
office, made him night watchman, a man who had once run a ten-
thousand-ton oiler, a man who had made them millions by his care
and industry. Then he sank to the gutter and on forty dollars a
month he tried to wrest a living for seven children—four of them
girls. You know the old story, the sordid details. Jones had to take on
liquor once in a while. He would have gone mad without a drunk at
least once a month. He figured that it was best to get drunk than go
mad, best for his family. It's all well enough to talk, for the chicken-
souled loafers who preach to their flocks and then get their living
through the generosity of silly women, to call poor Jones a drunken
reprobate, a useless loafer, because he drank. But the red-hearted
men, the men who knew him, knew what he was suffering, knew
what weight was pulling him down. In two years he never bought a
suit of clothes. He never spent anything upon himself—except at
certain times he felt that he must undergo relaxation, must get away
from himself—then he would get drunk, very drunk.
"His wife—oh, yes, he had his wife. She knew him, knew what he
had gone through—she saw he got enough money for rum, helped
him, stinted herself, slaved, worked—well, she did everything a poor,
high-spirited woman could do."
Cone paused, took a drink, a mere sip, from his glass of water, then
pushed it from him. The looks of the guests annoyed him. A
prohibitionist from Maine glared at him and made him
uncomfortable. There was a half-suppressed sneer upon the lips of
the Manager, but he was a gentleman—and a host.
"Yes—I was speaking of his wife," he went on. "She helped him, held
him up with a mighty soul, a tremendous strength for a woman. All
through the dark and gloomy life he led, sleeping in the daytime and
wandering about the desolate offices at night, she was always ready,
always willing to lend a hand, steadying, guiding, always sound in
judgment and above all ready at all times to make any sacrifice for
either him or the children—yes, she was a great woman—may the
God of the sea hold her gently where she lies in its bosom—dead?
Oh, yes, she died long ago. The worst of the affair came about when
Jones fell sick. He finally broke down under the awful strain, couldn't
stand it—no, the liquor didn't hurt him, he was used to that. It was
the despair, the dead weight of crushed hopes, the knowledge of an
old man unable to make good against the tide, the tide which was
sweeping his children down to hell. The oldest girl was twenty and
forced to work at a place where—well, never mind, it was the same
old sordid story of a young woman staying, sticking out at a place
where it was impossible for her to come out as she went in. Ruin,
and hell for her afterward—convention, we call it—but what's the
use? She was the old man's favorite, and it hit him very hard, very
hard indeed.
"Yes, I remember it very well. Poor old Jones, captain of a ten-
thousand-ton ship, owner of a quarter interest in one of the biggest
commercial enterprises in the world—six children and a wife starving
on forty dollars a month and the seventh child—yes, it was pretty
bad, especially bad for Jones, for he had done nothing to deserve his
fate, nothing but fight a combination which knew no mercy. The
relentless, implacable cruelty of corporations is well enough known
to you gentlemen. Their laws are like the laws of Nature—transgress
them and you must die. The laws of life are supposed to be just,
therefore it is probable that those of some corporations are so
likewise—I don't know. But they had smashed Jones. Crushed him
down—yes, there he was at forty a month, trying to forget, trying to
do something to keep his family alive, and then under the heaviest
strain he broke one day—broke and went down."
Many of the guests at the Manager's table had now resumed their
poise. Some at the farther end resumed conversation, overlooking
the story-teller and wondering a little at his bad form to monopolize
the talk of the complaisant dinner humor. But some of the men
nearest the Manager still listened and the old Captain watched them
with his dark bright eyes, eyes which seemed to sparkle like
diamonds in the light. They were the eyes which had pointed the
way to many millions of dollars' worth of cargo, many thousand
passengers, and they watched over them through many a wild and
stormy night upon the bridge of his ship in mid-ocean where the
mind has much time to ponder over the methods, the ethics of the
commercial human.
"I found him at the hospital," went on Cone. "He was shaky, but he
fought his weakness back and went home at the end of two weeks
to find his wife down with pneumonia and the house full of famished
children."
Cone stopped speaking for a moment and gazed across the table at
the polished buffet, seeming to see something in the mirror back of
it. The Manager looked up, saw his gaze and spoke:
"I know there's lots of hardships, Captain," said he, "and I don't lay
it all to the drink habit. Let your glass be filled—what?"
"Pardon me," said the old seaman. "I am old and forgetting my story
—I was just thinking a bit. This is not a temperance lecture at all—
no, no, that is not what I was thinking of." And he gazed at the
prohibitionist across the board who was fingering his napkin.
"No, the thing that I was coming to is this. Jones found things in a
desperate condition at his home. He must have money. It was an
absolute necessity to have medical attendance at once for his wife,
and he dreaded the free ward of the hospitals—he had gone into
one once himself and knew what it meant. He must have money for
his children."
"A man might steal under those conditions without being very bad,"
interrupted a man sitting next to him.
"That isn't what he did," said the old Captain. "He met a friend on
the street while on his way to a pawnshop—and the friend heard his
tale. His friend was a bank messenger, at least he was carrying the
proceeds of a ship's cargo in a bag. You see, in those days, captains
were allowed to collect freights at certain points, being in the
companies, and these moneys were carried aboard the ship until she
reached her home port. Sometimes there were many thousand
dollars. This friend had been with Jones in the old days and he knew
his history. The money he carried was freights from an oil ship just
arrived. There was fifteen thousand dollars of it in gold, and it was
the property of the very corporation which had squeezed Jones and
ruined him. Well, the friend did the obvious, did the human thing. He
opened the bag and gave Jones just five hundred dollars in gold and
then went along to try and fix the matter up with the firm—it
required lying—that is bad; it required many other things which we
will not discuss here, but they are eminently bad, bad as they can be
—and by dint of lying, and pilfering, and—well, the friend made
good the loss without ever getting found out—yes, a horrible
example, I admit. He made good the five hundred and no one ever
knew he was a thief. No one knows to this day—except—anyway,
Jones saved his wife, and at the end of the money the friend helped
him to buy into a schooner and he got command. They paid twenty-
five per cent. in those days and he pulled out making enough to
save the rest from abject poverty."
"But you don't mean you approve of that fellow, that thief who
appropriated other people's money, his employers' money, do you?"
asked the Manager in amazement. "The thing for him to have done
was to have gone to the firm and stated the case, told of the
poverty of Jones, told how he should be helped. No human being
would have refused him."
"On the contrary, the friend did just those things—afterward—and as
I said before, corporations know no laws but their own. They are
relentless as the laws of Nature, as implacable as the laws of health.
Go where there is cholera, get the germ into your system, and you
will understand what I mean. No human feeling, no sympathy—
nothing will save you but your own powers of resistance. You will
necessarily die unless you can stand it. Most people die. And it may
be right to have things this way—I don't know, I don't set up as a
judge; I am a sailor. But I am human—and I don't hate my neighbor,
I don't look upon my friend as my enemy. Perhaps I am wrong. Still
the thief in this case suffered much. He was for years afraid of being
found out. That shows the whole horrible futility of it all. He suffered
more than Jones, for Jones knew from where the money came,
knew it was money which by his judgment should have gone to him
anyway. Jones refused to pay it back and wanted to publish the fact
that he had gotten even with the corporation to the extent of five
hundred dollars.
"Of course, he didn't do it. The friend persuaded him not to, and
when he went into the coaster he forgot to talk about it even when
under the effects of his drinks.
"You see, it was about that time the insurance troubles came about.
Marine insurance had a tumble owing to the loss of several heavy
ships and other matters not worth discussing now. You were badly
hit yourself, I believe,"—and the old Captain nodded to the Manager,
who smiled acquiescence—"you told me at the time—if I remember
rightly—that one more vessel gone and you would go to the wall.
"The friend owned shares in that schooner, owned more than half of
her, and he it was that let her go out, made her go to sea after her
policies ran out. He would not stop her carrying, for it meant laying
her up and Jones would have to go ashore again until things
straightened out. It was the hurricane season and she had to go
light to Cuba.
"I remember something of the affair, for I happened to be on the
dock when she sailed. Jones was standing aft giving orders, and his
wife, with her three daughters, were below in the cabin. It was a
pretty picture of commercial life, a picture of a man doing his work
with his family or part of it around him, and I almost envied him his
place. What does an old liner skipper ever have of domestic life?
Never gets home, never sees his wife but once or twice a year, and
the company never lets her go aboard the ship at all if they can help
it. Well, she sailed out that August day, and the next thing we heard
of him was that his schooner was driven ashore during a gale. She
rammed up on one of the Bahamas, Castle Rock, I believe, and then
broke up. Some of the crew and his daughters were saved—he and
his wife went down—lost before they could get them ashore.
"And so there it is—did the men do all that was right or did they do
all that was wrong? That's the question. Where is the line of
demarkation, where does the wrong leave off and right begin, or
how is the mixture to be sifted down? We go by rules, we must play
according to rules or the game becomes chaos. But do the rules
always hold, do they always cover every emergency? I don't know,
but I believe there is bad, or what is called bad, in all men, also
there is good—it depends upon the man—not the rule."
There was a long pause. The Manager gazed curiously at his guest.
"You say the schooner went ashore on Castle Rock?"
"I said—well, it was somewhere about there, I don't know exactly,"
replied the old seaman, annoyed.
"There never was a wreck on Castle Rock that I ever heard of," said
the Manager, eying the old Captain curiously, "but there was the
Hattie Davis that was lost on the Great Inagua Bank—she wasn't
insured, I believe."
"Yes, she was lost on the Great Inagua," assented the Captain,
leaning back, as though the story were closed.
"You had a large interest in her, I believe," said the Manager slowly,
"and I recollect, now, you lost all in her——"
"The light was not so good as it is now," quickly put in the old
seaman. "It used to show only in clear weather—and it's almost
always clear through the passage—I remember how the passengers
used to be glad when we entered the passage coming up from Cuba
in the old Panama ships—rough in the tumble off Maysi when the
wind holds nor'east for a spell."
The Manager was gazing at the old skipper strangely. Then he
suddenly turned and started to discuss other matters with his
guests. The dinner went along without incident and afterward we
arose to go to the smoking-room for our cigars.
"Come along with me, Cone," said the Manager, "I have a new
orchid I picked up I want to show you; you always liked flowers, you
know." Afterward I passed them and overheard the Manager saying
in a low tone—"Well, you always had a hell of a reputation, Cone,
anyway, but under the circumstances—well, there might be some
sort of justification. You are too full of that damned sentiment for
any business whatever. Still, I'll admit that it isn't so much what a
man does that matters—that is, it doesn't matter so much as how it
is done—and who does it."
And so this was Cone? This was the master who had earned a
reputation for some very queer things as seamen see them. I
remember the old days, the words of poor old Simpson who had
long gone to the port of missing ships. Sentimental Captain Cone,
stout, grizzled, bronzed, the man who lost his hand holding to the
picture of a wife who had been false to him and who had accused
him of many things too hard to print. It was strange.
I suddenly felt I would like to see Simpson, to acknowledge he was
not so far wrong after all.
"The judgment of man is not good," I said in answer to some
question relative to nothing concerning Cone, and with this platitude
upon my lips I went home.
 ON GOING TO SEA
We sat together upon the quarter-deck under the awning of the
Harvest Queen. My own ship lay in the berth opposite, and I had
come over for a quiet smoke with Captain Large. He sailed in the
morning, and was bound for Frisco around Cape Horn. I would not
see him again for a year or two—probably never; but he and I had
sailed together and I had been his mate. We talked of things,
confidences, the talk of old shipmates who know each other very
well, and who are passing to know each other as memories. I had
shipped five apprentices, two sons of prominent men in the shipping
circles of New York, and I wondered at the outcome.
"I never take them any more," said Large. "I took one out of here a
few years ago, and—well, I don't care to repeat the job."
"But the boys are good—signed on regular—what can they do?" I
asked.
"I don't know, but I'll tell you what one did in the Wildwood when I
took him to China. I don't know how to explain it. The strangeness
of it all, the peculiar development that came about under seeming
natural causes—hereditary, you will say, and perhaps that is right I
have often studied it over, often lain awake in my bunk wondering at
it all, what peculiar ideas grew in a brain that was almost human—
almost, for when you think of what he did you cannot believe he was
quite so, even though his father was the President of the Marine
Association and had commanded the best American ships in his day."
The old skipper sat quiet for some minutes and seemed to be
thinking, studying over some problem. His cigar shone like a spark in
the warm night, but the smoke was invisible. I waited. Apprentices
were new to me. I had not had much chance to study the training of
youth. My own way had been rough. I had at last gotten my ship
after a life of strenuous endeavor and often desperate effort, and I
wanted to learn all I could. Men I knew. I had handled them by and
large from every part of the globe, and discipline, iron discipline, was
a thing my ship was noted for. She had a bad name.
"You see," said Large, his deep voice booming softly in the night,
"there is something intangible that a human being inherits from his
forbears. We look at the successful man as a target to aim at, an idol
we point out for youth to emulate. We don't always analyze the
greatness. A successful man is often so from the stress he puts upon
others. He will not stay in equilibrium. He keeps going on up, up
beyond the place his own production entitles him. He becomes
predatory, but unlike wolves or felines he preys upon his own kind.
"When President Jackson of the Bengal Line asked me to take Willie,
his son, I did so with the feeling that it was an honor conferred upon
me, the captain of one of the ships. Jackson had earned his position
by his own efforts and fought his way up to the top. I remembered
him well enough when he was a master, but he was now President
of the Line. He had a very sinister reputation in the old ships, but
that was all forgotten now.
"Willie came aboard looking like a physical wreck. He was a slight
youth of fifteen, stoop-shouldered, pale of face, but with the eye of
his father, and the peculiar settling of the corners of his mouth
noticeable in the old man. 'Be sure you bring him back safely,' said
his father, giving me a look I long remembered. 'Be sure you take
good care of him—and bring him back.' I didn't quite know what he
meant. I don't yet; but I know why he said it. I began to think of it
before we were at sea a week.
"Yes, he was only a boy, a mere lad, but he was all of his father—his
father as we remembered him in the South Sea. Degenerate? He
was the ablest lad of his size I ever saw. He stood right there on the
main deck the day we went out and took little or no notice of him
while the tug had our line. He was signed on, mind you, signed on
regular, so as not to excite the comment of 'pull.' Hell! why do they
send boys to sea when the shore is the place to train them? He
stood there and saw me looking at him, thinking of the words 'be
sure and bring him back'—yes, I would.
"'Say, Cap, dis is fine. Let's put de rags on her an' let her slide. I
wants to see her slip erlong—t'hell wid towin', says me,' and he
came up the poop steps on the starboard side to chat with me—a
thing no one, as you know, can do aboard a ship without a
reprimand. Every one heard him talking to me. He yelled it out in a
shrill voice—yes, talking to me, the captain, on the poop. 'See here,
young man,' I said to him, 'you mustn't talk to me while I'm on deck.
Go down on the main deck, and when you want anything, you ask
the mate—he will talk with you or get you what you want—you
understand? It's not the thing to ever speak to the captain of a ship
without permission.'
"'Aw, fergit it, cully! Don't youse make no mistake erbout me. I
spoke fair an' civil to youse, an' if youse don't want to answer you
kin go to hell, you stuck-up old fool! D'ye git that right?' he said
shrilly.
"Well, you can imagine what that sounded like to the men. Twenty
of them were grinning and both mates aghast. I was the master, a
man known the world over as a 'driver.' There was nothing to do but
take the lad in hand at once.
"'Take him forward and rope's-end him,' I said to Bowles, the second
officer, a man weighing two hundred pounds and a 'bucko' of the
strongest type. You remember him, the toughest mate afloat?
"But Willie looked up at me with a sneer.
"'You try it, you sea loafer. I'll sweat youse fer it if youse do. You
ain't de whole thing aboard here. Youse don't know me, I guess.'
"I had to do it. The affair had gone too far. Bowles grabbed him by
the collar and lifted him off his feet, and he let out a scream like a
wildcat—a most unearthly shriek. Bowles whipped him good and
hard, tanned him so he could scarcely sit down; but he just cursed
and swore at the officer, telling him what he'd do to him afterward.
He got an extra lick or two for this. Bowles paid no attention, but
went back to his station to attend lines. Half an hour later he was
standing at the rail when I saw a form shoot out of the galley door
and drive a long knife into his back. He sank down without a word,
and Willie stood over him ready for the finish. The mate knocked
him down with a belaying pin before he could kill.
"It was a terrible thing, an awful state of affairs beginning within five
minutes after the tug had let go. It was uncanny. A young boy doing
such things aboard a ship. I would have put him ashore at once, but
remembered the articles he had signed and the words of the
president of the line. I hesitated and the opportunity was lost——"
"I would have made another," I interrupted. "I would have sent the
young villain to prison at once. No good could possibly happen from
such an agreement, no good come from a horrible little devil like
that."
"I don't know. I don't quite know yet what to make of it all.
According to the usual rule there could be no good from a boy who
would deliberately commit such a crime; but we men who know life,
the real life, know that rules are not good to follow. You know that.
I've tried to figure it all out, but there is no answer, no accounting
for the strangeness of character that develop under certain
conditions. We tied Willie up while he was unconscious from the
blow of the pin, and instead of putting Bowles ashore we
endeavored to bring him around. I took him aft and sewed up the
cut. It was an awful wound, but Bowles was a very strong man. It
took a month before he could get about the deck again. We had run
clear to the equator.
"In the meantime Willie had had another run in, and I had him
brought aft to have a little talk with him, to try and explain to him
how a ship must be run, the iron discipline and the custom of the
master not to associate with any one, either boy or man, from
forward.
"'Aw, cut it out, cully—cut de langwidge! It don't go none wid me—
see? I comes aboard dis ship an' gets it in de neck de foist round.
Den I slings inter de bloke wot does the trick—'n by rights I ought
ter take a fall outer youse, Cap—'n I've a good mind to do it, too.
Dem sea tricks don't go none wid me.'
"'But don't you know I could hang you if I wanted to? Don't you
know my word is law here? I am in absolute command. If you don't
follow the rules of the ship I'll have to punish you severely.'
"'Nothin' doin', Bo, nothin' doin' at all. Youse kin cut all that sort o'
talk out when youse chins wid me—see? Say, Bo, whatcher take me
fer, anyways? Er "come on," er what? Whatcher t'ink I am, anyways,
hey? Go tell de little choild stories to yer gran'mother—don't spring
dem on me, don't try to hand me nothin' funny—I'm a MAN! An'
don't youse t'ink youse kin take de call of me, neider, Bo, fer youse
makes a mistake mixin' it wid me! I'm a fightin' MAN—me fader'll tell
youse dat, an' dat's why he sends me wid youse when I might be
goin' to school. De old man is a lulu, an' I am his son, Bo, a son of a
dog—nothin' yaller in de breed; 'n if youse t'ink you kin razzle-dazzle
me you'll sure fall down. Youse take dat from me, Bo! D'youse git it
straight?'
"'I'll turn you loose if you'll promise to do the right thing from now
on,' I said.
"'Aw, no, Bo, I don't have to promise nothin'. Youse ain't got me
right yet. I ain't no child. What de hell's the matter wid youse,
anyhow?'
"'All right, then, you'll stay locked up until the end of the voyage and
then I'll turn you over to the police, and——'
"'An' you'll pay like hell fer that 'f I does. Youse see!' he snarled.
"Well, what could I do? What would you have done under the
circumstances? The boy was not afraid. I knew his breed too well. I
knew his father. He would not suffer the smallest infringement of
what he believed to be his rights. He would resist to the death. He
had gone with a gang of young ruffians and had developed a certain
sense of what he believed to be right. He saw no law but that of
absolute equality; and there is no such thing. He was at fault. It was
absurd for men who ran a ship whose name was 'hard' to allow a
little boy to take charge, a little fellow not weighing a hundred
pounds. I decided to give him a real whipping—a whipping that
would make a permanent mark in his memory. I hated to think of it
—hated to really believe it was necessary, for there is nothing so
horrible as whipping a man—and the lad was a man in his own
opinion. There is absolutely nothing so soul-killing, so fearfully
degrading. I prefer the bloodiest fighting always to the cold-blooded
lash. I have seen men lose their self-respect under the degrading
stroke of the lash; and a man without self-respect had better be
dead. I studied the case and remembered his father. He was a small
man physically—I never knew a big man make a good seaman; but
he could take charge of a ship, no matter what kind of creatures
were forward, and he never spoke but once in giving an order. The
father had the same idea in regard to right and wrong—he never
forgave one, never forgot. Yet he had been a staunch friend of mine.
He had many friends who swore by him—and he was always to be
relied upon, you could always count upon him no matter what the
cost to himself in any emergency. It was his idea of duty—and he
feared nothing at all.
"It was just a week later on a hot day when I had gone below to
work the noon sight that I became aware of a pair of eyes looking at
me from the top of the companionway, and as I looked up I gazed
right into those of Willie; but it was along the blue barrel of my own
forty-five caliber six-shooter. The gun had always been hanging close
to my bunk head—ready for emergencies.
"'Bang!' The shot came without a second's warning. The bullet tore
through my arm. I sprang through the bulkhead into the forward
cabin just as the second shot ripped me across the neck. I was
rushing for the doorway to the main deck and the third shot threw
splinters in my face as it hit the edge of the door. Willie was coming
right along behind me, and firing as he came—and I—well, I confess
it, I was running for my life. I heard his yell of derision, a shrill
scream——
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