We sat together upon the quarter-deck under the awning of the Harvest Queen. My own ship lay in the berth opposite, and I had come over for a quiet smoke with Captain Large. He sailed in the morning, and was bound for Frisco around Cape Horn. I would not see him again for a year or two—probably never; but he and I had sailed together and I had been his mate. We talked of things, confidences, the talk of old shipmates who know each other very well, and who are passing to know each other as memories. I had shipped five apprentices, two sons of prominent men in the shipping circles of New York, and I wondered at the outcome.
"I never take them any more," said Large. "I took one out of here a few years ago, and—well, I don't care to repeat the job."
"But the boys are good—signed on regular—what can they do?" I asked.
"I don't know, but I'll tell you what one did in the Wildwood when I took him to China. I don't know how to explain it. The strangeness of it all, the peculiar development that came about under seeming natural causes—hereditary, you will say, and perhaps that is right I have often studied it over, often lain awake in my bunk wondering at it all, what peculiar ideas grew in a brain that was almost human—almost, for when you think of what he did you cannot believe he was quite so, even though his father was the President of the Marine Association and had commanded the best American ships in his day." The old skipper sat quiet for some minutes and seemed to be thinking, studying over some problem. His cigar shone like a spark in the warm night, but the smoke was invisible. I waited. Apprentices were new to me. I had not had much chance to study the training of youth. My own way had been rough. I had at last gotten my ship after a life of strenuous endeavor and often desperate effort, and I wanted to learn all I could. Men I knew. I had handled them by and large from every part of the globe, and discipline, iron discipline, was a thing my ship was noted for. She had a bad name.
"You see," said Large, his deep voice booming softly in the night, "there is something intangible that a human being inherits from his forbears. We look at the successful man as a target to aim at, an idol we point out for youth to emulate. We don't always analyze the greatness. A successful man is often so from the stress he puts upon others. He will not stay in equilibrium. He keeps going on up, up beyond the place his own production entitles him. He becomes predatory, but unlike wolves or felines he preys upon his own kind.
"When President Jackson of the Bengal Line asked me to take Willie, his son, I did so with the feeling that it was an honor conferred upon me, the captain of one of the ships. Jackson had earned his position by his own efforts and fought his way up to the top. I remembered him well enough when he was a master, but he was now President of the Line. He had a very sinister reputation in the old ships, but that was all forgotten now.
"Willie came aboard looking like a physical wreck. He was a slight youth of fifteen, stoop-shouldered, pale of face, but with the eye of his father, and the peculiar settling of the corners of his mouth noticeable in the old man. 'Be sure you bring him back safely,' said his father, giving me a look I long remembered. 'Be sure you take good care of him—and bring him back.' I didn't quite know what he meant. I don't yet; but I know why he said it. I began to think of it before we were at sea a week.
"Yes, he was only a boy, a mere lad, but he was all of his father—his father as we remembered him in the South Sea. Degenerate? He was the ablest lad of his size I ever saw. He stood right there on the main deck the day we went out and took little or no notice of him while the tug had our line. He was signed on, mind you, signed on regular, so as not to excite the comment of 'pull.' Hell! why do they send boys to sea when the shore is the place to train them? He stood there and saw me looking at him, thinking of the words 'be sure and bring him back'—yes, I would.
"'Say, Cap, dis is fine. Let's put de rags on her an' let her slide. I wants to see her slip erlong—t'hell wid towin', says me,' and he came up the poop steps on the starboard side to chat with me—a thing no one, as you know, can do aboard a ship without a reprimand. Every one heard him talking to me. He yelled it out in a shrill voice—yes, talking to me, the captain, on the poop. 'See here, young man,' I said to him, 'you mustn't talk to me while I'm on deck. Go down on the main deck, and when you want anything, you ask the mate—he will talk with you or get you what you want—you understand? It's not the thing to ever speak to the captain of a ship without permission.'
"'Aw, fergit it, cully! Don't youse make no mistake erbout me. I spoke fair an' civil to youse, an' if youse don't want to answer you kin go to hell, you stuck-up old fool! D'ye git that right?' he said shrilly.