"Who is he?"
"He's the ship's Bo's'n."
"Am I at the beck and call of everybody on the ship?"
"Look here, young feller," said an old, down-east sailor named Templin, who, on account of his age and experience, had been made the Bo's'n's mate of the port watch. "You've had a lot of advice throwed into you, which you may or may not foller. This last is worth 'bout as much as all the rest. The Bo's'n ain't no certificated officer. He don't live aft. He's got a position sort o' 'twixt fo'c's'l an' quarter-deck, but there's no man aboard who can do more for you or agin you than him. You seems to be a sort of a friendless damn fool. We don't none of us believe your yarn, but we sympathize with you because we've been in the same sitooation, all of us. Jim Gersey is a square man. You ain't had no chance to run athwart his hawse, an' like enough he wants to do you a good turn. You'd better go, an' go a-runnin'."
"Thank you," answered Beekman, rising and following the boy to the boatswain's cabin, right abaft the forecastle.
"Look here, Smith--" began that grizzled and veteran mariner, who had followed the sea all his life, and looked it.
"Smith is not my name."
"In course, it ain't, but it's the name you'll go by on this ship. I don't know why it is, but every man I ever seed articled on a ship without his consent got named Smith or Jones. I've knowed some mighty respectable people o' them names, an' I don't see why they've got to be saddled with all the offscourin's o' creation, meanin' no offense," said the rough, but somehow kindly, old man. "Smith it is, an'--"
"Smith goes," said Beekman briefly. "What's my first name, if I may ask?"
"Reads 'John' on the articles."