The Under Dog

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

And the modesty of the man!

Nothing that he has done, or can still do, has ever stretched his hat measure or swelled any part of his thinking apparatus. The old pilot-cap is still number seven, and the sensible head beneath it number seven, too. It could be number eight, or nine, or even ten, if it had expanded in proportion to the heroic quality of many of his deeds. During the light-house days, for instance, when some sudden, shift of wind would churn the long rollers into bobbles and then into frenzied seas that smothered the Ledge in white suds, if a life-boat was to be launched in the boiling surf, the last man to jump aboard, after a mighty push with his long hindmost leg, was sure to be this same bundle of whalebone and hickory. And should this boat, a few minutes later, go whirling along in the "Race," bottom side up, with every worker safe astride her keel, principally because of Captain Bob's coolness and skill in hauling them out of the water, again the last man to crawl beside the rescued crew would be this same long-legged, long armed skipper.

Or should a guy-rope snap with a sound like a pistol-shot, and a great stone swung to a boom and weighing tons should begin running amuck through piles of cement, machinery, and men, and some one of the working gang, seeing the danger, should, with the quickness and sureness of a mountain-goat, spring straight for the stone, clutching the end of the guy and bounding off again, twisting the bight round some improvised snubbing-post thus checking its mad career, you would not have had to ask his name twice.

"Cap'n Bob stopped it, sir," was sure to have been the proffered reply.

So, too, in his present occupation of pilot. It was only a few years ago that I stood on the deck of an incoming steamer, straining my eyes across a heaving sea, the horizon lost in the dull haze of countless froth-caps; we had slowed for a pilot, so the word came down the deck. Suddenly, against the murky sky-line, with mainsail double-reefed and jib close-hauled, loomed a light craft plunging bows under at every lurch. Then a chip the size of your hand broke away from the frail vessel, and a big wave lying around for such prey, sprang upon it with wide-open mouth. The tiny bit dodged and slipped out of sight into a mighty ravine, then mounted high in air, upborne in the teeth of another great monster, and again was lost to view. Soon the chip became a bit of driftwood manned by two toy men working two toy oars like mad and bearing at one end a yellow dot.

Then the first officer walked down the deck to where I stood, followed by a huddle of seamen who began unrolling a rope ladder.

"You're right," I heard an officer answer a passenger. "It's no fit weather to take a pilot. Captain wouldn't have stopped for any other boat but No. 11. But those fellows out there don't know what weather is."

The bit of driftwood now developed into a yawl. The yellow dot broadened and lengthened to the semblance of a man standing erect and unbuttoning his oil-skins as he looked straight at the steamer rolling port-holes under, the rope ladder flopping against her side. Then came a quick twist of the oars, a sudden lull as the yawl shot within a boat's length of the rope ladder, and with the spring of a cat the man in oil-skins landed with both feet on its lower rung, and the next instant he was over the steamer's rail and on her deck beside me.

I thought I knew that spring, even before I saw his face or got hold of his hand.

It was Captain Bob.