Soon four or five of the crewmen start hanging around with the bully, admiring him too much, laughing too much at what he says, siding with him against others, and even doing a little minor bullying themselves by ganging up on this or that victim as soon as each has recognized the streak of cowardly sadism in the other which binds them together as human jackals.
A man like Resnick leaves the strong alone at first; waits until the jackals have gathered around him. When this stage is reached, when anybody who says anything is a yellow stool-pigeon, you find the best man in your crew a hospital case with bleeding nose, bruised face, black eyes, and maybe a couple of broken ribs caved in by someone's shoe. After the doctor gives him first aid you go to the infirmary and ask him who did it. He clamps his lips together and tells you he didn't see who it was. He's lying, and he knows you know he is lying, but can you torture it out of him or punish him for not telling you? No. And there's nothing a Captain can do about it. He must have the testimony of the injured party in writing, signed and witnessed, and the Code Book must be followed specifically in punishing the aggressors; and if the Captain does anything at all he is almost certain to be tied up in court at the first port of call by the punished parties. Even if the Captain has provable justification for putting a man in the brig or fining him or giving him a demotion in assigned type of work, his ship will be delayed by the trial, and the owners will decide they need a Captain who knows how to avoid such costly delays.
A man like Oscar Resnick is a social cancer, and I saw the symptoms of his presence on the ship come into being, and grow, and I knew he was too cunning and too shrewd to let them get out of hand. Any other Captain, knowing all this, would sit back and do nothing, knowing that that was his only safe course consistent with his duty of keeping the ship on schedule.
I had to follow this course of action too. But I knew that it was just a prelude, that when Resnick sensed the time was ripe for his purposes, he would get at me.
It would be subtle and would only take a minute. It would take place in the presence of the crew. It would be something that would catch me unawares, bring the light of fear into my eyes for all the crew to see. That would be enough. The word would go back that Captain Peabody was yellow.
Some of the crew would quit the ship at North Marsport, telling the Union business agent they didn't want to ship with a yellow Captain. The business agent would find men refusing to sign on my ship because I was a yellow Captain. And inevitably the time would come when I could not keep a full crew. Then the owners would dismiss me, and I wouldn't be able to get another berth as Captain.
I didn't know how to avoid it. It was only a question of time. When would it happen? Today? Not for six months yet? Tomorrow? When?
David Markham proved from the start to be an extremely conscientious orderly. My quarters were kept spotless, I had only to lift my eyebrows and he was there ready to obey. How many hours a day he spent wiping up imaginary dust, rubbing nonexistent detergent off my eating utensils for the nth time before I sat down to eat, polishing my already mirror-bright shoes, and the million and one things I didn't even know about, I'll never know.
Few orderlies mix with the crew, and he was no exception. Most orderlies either have the personality of a spinster to start with or acquire it after a few years. He had none of that, but then he wasn't the type that orderlies are made of.