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must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the
component part of every waking thought--till it is present in every
dream of their young sleep! The sea has been good to me, but when I
remember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now
and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don't
think I have done badly by it either. Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet
that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate
would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice
speaking above my hat would ask: "Don't you remember me, sir? Why!
little So-and-so. Such and such a ship. It was my first voyage." And I
would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of
this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very
quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides
out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged
father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the
morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays
too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all
to say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl,
"Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate. There's a
gentleman wants to get ashore. . . . Up with you, sir. Nearly got
carried off to Talcahuano, didn't you? Now's your time; easy does
it. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there." The tugs, smoking
like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury;
the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees--the benevolent steward has
shied his umbrella after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of
sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks
nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick
before next morning. By-and-by, when he has learned all the little
mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live
or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this
fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his
back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy
voice: "Do you remember me, sir? The little So-and-so."
'I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least
you had gone the right way to work. I have been thus slapped, and I have
winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone
to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump.
Don't I remember the little So-and-so's! I tell you I ought to know the
right kind of looks. I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on
the strength of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes--and,
by Jove! it wouldn't have been safe. There are depths of horror in that
thought. He looked as genuine as a new sovereign, but there was some
infernal alloy in his metal.
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