[Illustration: The Deck Lookout—“Danger Ahead.”]
Leaving out of question the responsibility, try and measure the physical misery when gales are howling, and spray is flying, and icy seas are shooting over the weather bulwarks, and the ship is slamming along, wallowing in the hollows or wriggling on zenith-seeking billows. It may be at night, when you cannot see a ship’s length ahead, and around you, threatening disaster and death, are a dozen vessels; it may be when the ice is moving and the towering bergs lie in your pathway. Then those dreadful middle watches, when, after a hard tour of duty, you are roused out of a comfortable bed, and jumped, half awakened, into the chill and misery of the gale-blown night with every nerve and muscle strained to the breaking-point. No, it is, believe me, the hardest kind of hard work, and it so saps the body, and warps the temper, and makes the best old before their day, that no self-respecting mother will let her daughter marry a man who knows an oar from a fence-rail, if he has learned their differences—watch-keeping.
The fourth and fifth officers, being young and hardy, and presumably with much to learn and suffer—for suffering somehow is considered an essential in sea-training—are not supposed to need adequate rest or sleep, and if that is not wearing on shipboard, go find me a ballad-monger to weave a rhyme for their comfort. The crew stand watch and watch; but as they can always steal a comforting nap, and have no responsibility, they know little of the mental wear and tear. The bo’s’n and his mate look out for the pulling and hauling, and for the dreary singing which the “chanty” man weds to them. Their tempers are always on edge, and it is their part to buffet and bluster. These are the gentlemen you usually hear, in season and out, bellowing about decks a highly garnished sea _argot_ which no one attempts to translate or deems of serious meaning. Occasionally, too, you may detect them to leeward of the houses, skylarking gloomily, in moments of forced gayety, with skulkers and sea-lawyers, “fetching them,” as they describe the pastime, “a belt under the jaw,” or airily promising to “knock” their “blooming ’eds off.” These, of course, are the vagaries of delegated authority, and should not lessen your regard for them, as they are generally good sailor-men after the heavy insular fashion. You must remember, also, they enjoy a prescriptive privilege of being most noisy, of wearing tremendous boots and very shabby clothes, and of trilling, like sea-larks, upon little silvery whistles, which are known indiscriminately as “pipes” or “calls.”