“Well, no, it must be confessed, that isn’t the usual way. I’ve got to share my mess with the roughest of them for a while, and work my way up; but I shall have a command just as soon as I am fit for it.”
“And when will that be?” asked Aleck.
“When I understand the ship and the ship’s work. A man isn’t fit to give orders until he knows how everything, to the very last twist of a rope, ought to be done, and how to do it himself, too.”
“And is that all?”
“I don’t know,” said Carter, a little puzzled; “that’s what the officers say. Shouldn’t you think that was about the whole of it?”
“It may be,” said Aleck; “but I was always taught that a man wasn’t ready to command others until he had learned to command himself.”
“Pshaw!” said Carter. “What a fellow you are to preach! I don’t believe I could tell you what time it is, that it wouldn’t give you a handle for a sermon or a lecture, whatever it may be. But the truth is, you hit the nail on the head so well that I can’t help liking it every time. I’ll treasure that up, and what you said the other day about making a man and a gentleman of myself.”
“By becoming a Christian!” said Aleck.
“Well, I suppose so, only it sounds so much like prigging to put it that way.”
“What sounds like prigging? If a ship-captain should offer to take you under his special instruction after you get aboard, and teach you all he knew, and make a first-rate officer of you, would you call it prigging if you were to try your best to learn, and come as near his own mark as you could?”