The bos’n of an English ship usually has eight hours or more below, and the best part of four watches on deck. This enables him to walk around after the men and take charge during the time they are at work and the navigator is unable to leave the poop or quarter-deck. Yankee bos’ns, or fourth mates, as we used to call them, were distinguished by a rough, strong voice made raucous by hard usage. Yelling and swearing at delinquent mariners, as the shore folk put it, was supposed to be their principal occupation, and to a certain extent the shore folk were right. But Richards was not noisy. Neither did he have the rough voice of the man-o’-war bos’n. He was as gentle as any shore-bred person, and even while he had served as second mate under me, he had never been anything but “Old” Richards,--old because he was so quiet.
When he took in hand the crew of that ship, it made me smile to think of him tackling men like 66Bill, Jones, or myself. Yet there he was over us, and it soon began to look like Hawkson knew what he was about when he put him in charge.
In the first place he had been used to discipline. He had served on a war-ship for so long that he seemed to know just what to do to get men to work without getting afoul of them.
There is an art in this. It is born in some, cultivated in others, but absolutely impossible to define in a way that might be useful to the great majority, for it is a mixture of so many qualities, so many different freaks and phases of temperament, and generally so dependent upon chance for its establishment, that it must be dealt with only as a peculiarity happening in human beings at remote intervals.
Richards had the one necessary quality to begin with, and that was a really kind disposition under his silent exterior. There was nothing offensive in him, and, while he never seemed to attract any one, he did not repel them. Magnetism he possessed in abundance, but this quality is of small use among men who have to be made to do things which often result in death and always in discomfort.
Often he would sit and listen to the arguments of the men, and they would sometimes appeal to 67him as judge, because he was so quiet and always gave them an answer they could understand.
“What makes ye sa keen fer carryin’ on discipline, friend Richards?” asked Martin, good-humouredly, one evening as the watch sat or lounged about the forecastle scuttle waiting to be called.
“It’s not your country’s ship; why d’ye care? Now a war-ship an’ a patriot I kin understand. I was a patriot mysel’.”
“I fou’t for England,” said big Jones, “but that ware different.”
“You’d have fought for China just as quick,” said the bos’n, “if any men you knew were going out to fight. It’s the same aboard a fighting craft as it is here. I’ve seen clerks in the shipping-houses, that couldn’t tell a cutlass from a pike, go crazy to fight when the war broke out. They liked to be called ‘patriots,’ too. All men like to fight if the whole crowd go in. It’s excitement and vanity. You’ll be more of a patriot and less a fighting man after you get ashore to stay.”
“Ay, that he will,” said Tim, the American. “He’s too ready for fight, an’ a bit o’ discipline will do him good.”
“Ah, hark ye at the bit o’ a man,” sneered Martin. “One might think he feared a little fracas, hey?” and he leered at the small sailor, who looked 68him squarely in the eyes and swore at him, for a bullying Scot he was.
Somehow, Richards never made trouble between men. They rarely took offence at his answers, and he never struck one.
To him the striking of a man lowered him at once. If the man was an equal and had any self-respect, it was necessary to go further into the matter always, he e............