“I tell you what I could do, Walter.”
“What?”
“I might swap watches with Enoch Hadlock. He is in your watch.”
“Yes, you could, but I wouldn’t.”
“Why not? Then we should be in the same watch again, and we could walk the deck, and talk, and have good times together, as we used to.”
“I’ll tell you, Ned; if you should swap watches with Hadlock, and get into my watch, it would make trouble. If I happened to give you a soft job, and somebody else a hard one, they would say I was partial—made fish of one, and flesh of another.”
“I never thought of that.”
“We shouldn’t be together any more for being in the same watch. You would be forward, and I should be aft.”
“Shouldn’t we be together when it was my trick at the helm?”
“Yes, but we couldn’t talk. It is against the rules of the ship, and very unseamanlike, for an officer, or anybody, to make talk with a man at the helm. You couldn’t come aft to talk with me, and if I should go forward to talk with you, it would make growling directly, and set all the men against you.”