but apart from this,
he wondered greatly what the final upshot of it all would be for the
Merchant Service in general and Mr. Spokesly in particular. For he could
not help regarding his chief officer as a brother of the craft. He
himself had received no illumination from the exponents of modern
thought. He had never been impressed by the advertisements of the London
School of Mnemonics, for example. He was so old-fashioned as to imagine
that to get on, a man must work hard, study hard, live hard, and stand
by for the chance to come. Mr. Spokesly, he knew quite well, had been
through the same mill as himself, only some ten years or so later. He
regarded him, therefore, as he could never regard Mr. Chippenham, for
example, who had never been in sail and who didn't know an oxter-plate
from an orlop-beam. As far as the natural shyness and taciturnity of
Englishmen would allow him, he was anxious for Mr. Spokesly to do well.
The man was singularly fortunate, in his opinion, to be chief mate so
soon. In nine or ten years, perhaps, he would have the experience to
warrant the owners' giving him a command. Provided, of course, that he
stuck to his business and took an interest in the fortunes of the firm.
It will be seen from this that Captain Meredith was a hopeless
conservative and reactionary. One of his brother-captains whom he met at
dinner ashore one evening actually told him so. "Why," said this
gentleman as he held a match to Captain Meredith's cigar, "why, my chief
officer told me to my face the other day that there was nothing in
experience nowadays. One man was as good as another, he said, so long as
he had his master's ticket. Yes! A fact!" Captain Meredith was aware,
too, that his ideas concerning conscientious achievement and enthusiasm
for one's employers were equally archaic. The young men of to-day seemed
to regard their jobs with dislike and their employers with suspicion.
Their sole obsession seemed to be money. He had had pointed out to him
an intoxicated youth who was causing a disturbance in a hotel bar, a
youth going out East to a ship as third officer at two hundred dollars a
month, they said. And the tale was received by every junior officer in
the harbour with hushed awe, although it was obvious that the object of
their envy would probably be laid aside with delirium tremens before he
could reach his billet. Captain Meredith noticed, too, that men who were
engrossed in their work were rated "queer" and a