“That’s fair enough!” shouted Tom Thornton. “The boy’s all right.”
“I’m game,” growled Bob, giving me his hand. “But I don’t like fresh kids.”
“That’s all right,” said I. “Mebbe I’ll get salted a little before the voyage is over.”
And so the affair ended in a laugh. But I guess I learned one lesson that I was not likely to forget in a hurry.
And both Thankful Polk and I had a whole lot to learn about this big ship. Although my chum had been five years from home (leaving his native village in the hills of Georgia when he was twelve) he had learned little seamanship. Nowadays ships do not receive apprentices as they used to in the palmy days of the American merchant marine, which is a regrettable fact, for it was from the class of apprentices that most of our best shipmasters came.
A seaman—a real A. B.—must know every part of the ship he serves, its rigging and whatnot, just as any other journeyman tradesman must know his business. It is not necessary that an able seaman should be a navigator; but every navigator should be an able seaman. Such a man likewise should be something of a sailmaker, rigger and shipbuilder. In these days when the work of a crew is so divided that men are stationed at certain work in all weathers few men before the mast are all-round seamen. And this is likewise regrettable.
In the months I had spent upon the Scarboro I had learned much—and in that I had the advantage of Thank. Captain Rogers and Mr. Robbins were both thorough-going seamen, and when we were not chasing whales I had been drilled by the mate, and by young Ben Gibson, the second officer, in the ropes, the spars, the handling of gear, and taught to take my trick at the wheel with the best man aboard.
And I was thankful for all this now, for although the Gullwing was a much larger ship, and differently rigged from the whaler, I could catch hold now pretty well when an order was given. I knew, too, that men like Captain Bowditch and Mr. Gates and Mr. Barney liked their hands to be smart, and I was not afraid to tackle anything alow or aloft.
The men told me, too, that “the old man” (which is a term given the captain aboard ship not at all disrespectful in meaning) was a terror for crowding on sail. Besides, there was a deeper reason for Captain Bowditch wishing to put his ship through the seas and reaching Baltimore just as soon as possible.
“Ye see,” said old Tom Thornton, in the dog-watch that afternoon, “the firm owns another ship like the Gullwing—the very spittin’ image of it—the Seamew. They’re sister ships; built in the same dockyard, at the same time, and by the very same plans. A knee, or a deck plank, out o’ either one would fit exactly into the similar space in the other—and vicy varsy.