The handle of the annunciator connected with the engine-room is jammed to “hard astern;” “ding! ding!” rings the signal from below; the water gushes in a turbulent torrent from the outboard deliveries, the engines throb fiercely, backing with all their strength, and as the lines are rendered, slacked, eased, let go, the steamer clears the pier-end with a rush, shoots far into midstream, and thus begins, wrong end foremost, her voyage westward. In the optimism of the moment the chief officer and the bo’s’n grow garrulous upon the recondite subject of anchor gear; the junior officers feel they quite deserve the good luck which makes them the hustling, bustling mates of a crack racer; and maritime Jack, still a little groggy and very much unwashed, blesses the stars that have let begin another “v’yage with an ’arf crown left of his hadvance,” and the prospects of “some bloomin’ American tobaccy” as soon as he’s clear of the tideway.
“Not a bad job, sir,” said the pilot, as the anchor takes the bottom and the ship straightens astern from her cable; “seemed ticklish a bit for a minute when they ’eld onto the spring so long, sir; but ’ere we are, bung up and bilge free, and with the looks of a good run, barrin’ the fog per’aps, for the morrer.”
The captain answers smilingly, for these two are old friends, and, what is more, the hauling out has been a joint enterprise, though the senior gets the credit, as he should. After a careful survey of the anchorage and a word with the chief officer, the captain enters his cabin and buckles down to the routine work, and there is always plenty of that awaiting him. He glows pleasurably over the handy, seamanlike way they have left the dock, for nautical critics are plenty and keen, and if he had not taken up his berth in the river so cleverly, the ill news would have grown apace, till, with unfair variations, it reached the ears of their high nobilities—the directors.
Clear-headed, brainy, driving men, are these master-mariners, and bearing patiently a responsibility that needs an iron will and a courage faltering at nothing. There is no royal road to their station, nor can willing hands make them what they must be. They cannot crawl through cabin windows, nor, for that matter, come flying in a pier-head jump through the gangway with one leg forward and the other aft. They have to fight their way over the bows, and struggle out of the ruck and smother in the fo’ks’le, by sturdy buffeting and hard knocks, by the persistent edging of stout shoulders backed by strong hearts and steady brains. If it is in them they will make their way in the end surely, and may set the course and stump to windward as they please, while others haul the weather-ear-rings, and drink their grog protestingly. No; master-mariners are made, not born, and, unlike many of their brothers in the government service, have to rise by energy, pluck, merit—why enumerate them?—by a hundred qualities the world is better for owning.