Jim puts the telephone on his head and leans against the rail around the small platform that sways far to one side, then to the other. Soon he hears the ship’s bell, a faint sound above the storm—“Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding.” Eight bells. It is exactly four o’clock. At four-thirty the bell rings again, just once. Two bells will be five o’clock, and so on until eight, when there will be eight bells again.
For a long time there is nothing for Jim to see but great gray waves rising and lifting the ship, and once in a while splashing over the decks way down below. Then far ahead and to the right Jim sees a tiny speck of light.
“Crow’s nest to wheelhouse,” he calls into the phone. “White light two points on the starboard bow.” The mate knows from this where to look for the light. The diagram on page 16 shows the words Jim will use when he tells the mate to look in other directions.
Jim thinks the white light probably comes from another ship. Soon he knows it does. He can see two white lights very close together and a green light a little below them. He and the mate know that a green light is always shown on the right or starboard side of a vessel that’s moving. There is no danger. Jim’s ship and the other one are a long way apart and are not headed for each other. If Jim saw both a green light and a red light with two white lights above them, he would be alarmed. This would mean a ship coming straight at him.
Now and then spray from the waves blows all the way to the crow’s nest, and Jim is glad of a protecting shield that comes up almost as high as his face. But he can feel the wind anyway, and he can hear it roar through the rigging. He almost has to shout into the phone so the mate can hear him.
The safety of the ship depends on Jim. Even in the darkness he can see a great deal from his high perch. He may notice the white foam of waves ahead behaving in a strange way. This could be the wreck of a half-sunken ship that would tear a hole in his own ship and send her to the bottom. If he dozed off, he might fail to sight some danger. So he must keep alert every minute. He’s responsible for the lives of all his shipmates, and he takes his job seriously.