“Fair enough,” replied the honest Murphy. “If I can't be good I'll be as good as I can.”
At that very instant Cappy Ricks was just discovering what kind of Irish Mr. Terence Reardon was.
The most innocent remark brought him the information he sought.
“Captain Murphy, whom you have just met, is to be master of the Narcissus, chief,” he explained. “He's a splendid fellow personally and a most capable navigator, and like you he's Irish. I'm sure you'll get along famously together.”
Cappy tried to smile away his apprehension, for a still small voice whispered to him and questioned the right of Terence Reardon to call him brother.
Mr. Reardon's sole reply to this optimistic prophecy was a noncommittal grunt, accompanied by a slight outthrust and uplift of the chin, a pursing of the lips and the ghost of a sardonic little smile. Only an Irishman can get the right tempo to that grunt—and the tempo is everything. In the case of Terence Reardon it said distinctly: “I hope you're right, sir, but privately I have my doubts.” However, not satisfied with pantomime, Mr. Reardon went a trifle farther—for reasons best known to himself. He laved the corner of his mouth with the tip of a tobacco-stained tongue and said presently: “I can't say, Misther Ricks, that I quite like the cut av that fella's jib.”
That was the Irish of it. A representative of any other race on earth would have employed the third person singular when referring to the absent Murphy; only an Irishman would have said “that fella,” and only a certain kind of Irishman could have managed to inject into such simple words such a note of scorn supernal. Cappy Ricks got the message—just like that.
“Then stay off his bridge, Reardon,” he warned the chief. “Your job is in the engine-room, so even if you and Captain Murphy do not like each other, there will be no excuse for friction. The only communication you need have with him is through the engine-room telegraph.”
“Then, sor,” Terence Reardon replied respectfully, “I'll take it kindly av you to tell him to keep out av me engine-room. I'll have no skipper buttin' in on me, tellin' me how to run me engines an' askin' me why in this an' that I don't go aisy on the coal. Faith, I've had thim do it—the wanst—an' the wanst only. Begorra, I'd have brained thim wit' a monkey wrench if they tried it a second time.”
“On the other hand,” Cappy remarked, “I've had to fire more than one chief engineer who couldn't cure himself of a habit of coming up on the bridge when the vessel got to port—to tell the skipper how to berth his ship against a strong flood tide. I suppose that while we have steamships the skippers will always wonder how the vessel can possibly make steerage way, considering the chief engineers, while the chiefs will never cease marvelling that such fine ships should be entrusted to a lot of Johnny Know-Nothings. However, Reardon, I might as well tell you that the Blue Star Navigation Company plays no favorites. When the chief and the skipper begin to interfere with the dividends, they look overside some bright day and see Alden P. Ricks waiting for them on the cap of the wharf. And when the ship is alongside, the said Ricks comes aboard with five bones in his pocket, and the said skipper and the said chief are invited into the dining saloon to roll the said bones—one flop and high man out. Yes, sir. Out! Out of the ship and out of the Blue Star employ—for ever.”