“My child,” Kit laughed (he hardly noticed it himself, but he always spoke to the mess-room boy now as if he were indeed the supercargo, instead of only the cabin boy), “if I had time I would tell you how many millions strikes cost every year without doing any good, for I read it one day in an old newspaper. But I haven’t time; the boat is waiting for me. You do the striking, and I’ll do the working. The fellows who work don’t generally need to strike. Besides, I like to do it.”
That evening Captain Griffith called Kit into his stateroom when his work in the pantry was done.
“I want you to make me out a complete list of everything that has been landed so far,” he said, “so that the agent ashore can receipt for the goods. I suppose you see by this time something of what a supercargo’s work is on board ship.”
“Yes, sir,” Kit answered; “he has to see that the whole cargo is taken out and landed, and receipted for by the agent.”
“Yes, that and much more,” the Captain continued. “He is the agent on board of the parties that charter the ship, and must look after their interests in every way. He is not an employee of the ship, but of the charterers. Suppose the North Cape is chartered by John Smith & Co. to carry a cargo to Rio Janeiro. They deliver their goods on the wharf, and we load them and carry them to Rio, but beyond loading, carrying, and unloading them, we legally have nothing to do with them. It is the supercargo’s business to tally the goods delivered on the wharf and put on board, see them safely landed at their destination, and take the consignee’s receipt for them. But more than that, he must take care of the cargo on the voyage. If there is live stock, he sees that it is fed and cared for. If there are fruits or vegetables, he takes care that they are kept cool in hot climates, and kept from freezing in northern latitudes. In short,” he concluded, “the supercargo must take as great care of the cargo as if it belonged to him, always under the owners’ orders. And he is a passenger on the ship, living in the cabin with the captain, and having nothing to do, of course, with the management of the vessel. There are always two interests on a chartered ship,—the interest of the ship, which the captain takes care of, and the interest of the cargo, which is the supercargo’s work. Unfortunately we have had only small charters lately, that did not warrant the employment of a supercargo, so his work has been left for me to do. When we are chartered for large and valuable cargoes, the charterers always put a supercargo on board.”
Kit’s work on shore did not end when the small general cargo was discharged, as he expected. Nassau business men have an easy way of thinking that things can be done just as well to-morrow as to-day; and when the North Cape was empty her return cargo of sponges and pineapples was not ready. He had to make frequent visits to Mr. Johnson, the pineapple man, and Mr. Sawyer, the sponge man, to hurry them up.
“I am just going out to the pine fields now,” Mr. Johnson said when Kit first visited him; “come along, and see for yourself how things are.”
Kit climbed into the carriage with him, and they drove out about two miles back of the city to the nearest fields, where he saw for the first time how pineapples grow. The field was a large one of twenty or thirty acres, very rocky, but with soil between the protruding rocks that was almost as red as bricks, and covered with plants from three to four feet high, each plant with many long, narrow, stiff “leaves,” and each leaf sharp with spines along its sides and a needle-like point. The score of colored men who were cutting the pines all wore leather leggings, he noticed, to protect them from the sharp points.
“And only one pineapple to a plant!” Kit exclaimed; “I thought they would bear more than that.”
“Only one,” Mr. Johnson laughed. “The pine is a very large fruit to grow on so small a plant, and each plant produces only one. When it is ripe, we cut it, and that plant’s usefulness is over, except that it sends out a great many little shoots, called slips, which we take up and plant for next year’s crop. You see the pine grows on a long stalk in the middle of the plant, and shoots up like a big cabbage head out of a bush.”