Richards had the one necessary quality to begin with, and that was a really kind disposition under his silent exterior. There was nothing offensive in him, and, while he never seemed to attract any one, he did not repel them. Magnetism he possessed in abundance, but this quality is of small use among men who have to be made to do things which often result in death and always in discomfort.
Often he would sit and listen to the arguments of the men, and they would sometimes appeal to him as judge, because he was so quiet and always gave them an answer they could understand.
“What makes ye sa keen fer carryin’ on discipline, friend Richards?” asked Martin, good-humouredly, one evening as the watch sat or lounged about the forecastle scuttle waiting to be called.
“It’s not your country’s ship; why d’ye care? Now a war-ship an’ a patriot I kin understand. I was a patriot mysel’.”
“I fou’t for England,” said big Jones, “but that ware different.”
“You’d have fought for China just as quick,” said the bos’n, “if any men you knew were going out to fight. It’s the same aboard a fighting craft as it is here. I’ve seen clerks in the shipping-houses, that couldn’t tell a cutlass from a pike, go crazy to fight when the war broke out. They liked to be called ‘patriots,’ too. All men like to fight if the whole crowd go in. It’s excitement and vanity. You’ll be more of a patriot and less a fighting man after you get ashore to stay.”
“Ay, that he will,” said Tim, the American. “He’s too ready for fight, an’ a bit o’ discipline will do him good.”
“Ah, hark ye at the bit o’ a man,” sneered Martin. “One might think he feared a little fracas, hey?” and he leered at the small sailor, who looked him squarely in the eyes and swore at him, for a bullying Scot he was.
Somehow, Richards never made trouble between men. They rarely took offence at his answers, and he never struck one.
To him the striking of a man lowered him at once. If the man was an equal and had any self-respect, it was necessary to go further into the matter always, he explained. If he had not enough self-respect to fight his smiter to the last limit, then he was taking whatever chance the fellow had of ever becoming a man, for no man, he held, could be a person of spirit and courage and allow another to strike him. It might work well in religious congregations, where men were tricky and desperately low and mean, stooping to any vile revenge, but among men at sea upon a ship deck it was different. To assault a man weaker than himself was almost as bad in his eyes as assaulting a girl. In either case, the victim’s self-respect was lost, and the person consequently liable to be ruined. It would require a nice adjustment, he claimed, to prevent murder. He very plainly stated that, if Martin, Jones, or any one of the heavy fellows who might be tempted to try accounts with him at some disliked order, should so far forget the discipline of the ship and make a fight with him, he would be bound by all law and precedent, as upon a man-of-war, to kill him. The turning of the smitten cheek to the offender was not to be taken literally. It meant a man should show due forbearance before entering into a fracas, which would certainly end fatally for one or the other.