“Why, then––then we’d be lost––all hands would be lost.”
Poor Johnnie! he was all but crying.
“That’s it. And that’s where some would say you showed yourself a man, and some a fool, Johnnie-boy. Some would say, ‘Use judgment––think of the other eighteen or twenty men safe aboard the vessel.’ Would you use judgment, or what, Johnnie?”
“M-m––I don’t know. What would you do, Captain Clancy?”
“What d’y’ think I’d do, Johnnie?” Clancy drew the boy up and tucked the little face to his own broad breast. The rest of us knew well enough what Clancy would do. “Judgment hell!” Clancy would say, and go in and get lost––or maybe get away with it where a more careful man would be lost––but we waited to hear what Johnnie––such a little boy––would say. He said it at last, after looking long into Clancy’s face.
“I think you’d go in, Captain Clancy.”
Clancy laughed at that. “Lord, Johnnie-boy, no wonder everybody loves you. No matter what a man does, all you see is the best that’s in him.”
It was time to clean up then, and Johnnie of course was bound to help.