s something queer about her
figger-'ed. It was a half-breed woman. She was smiling. She had bare
breasts, and she used to wear earrings. Her chaps used to keep a spare
pair for her in a box. She was always fresh and bright, but I've heard
say she was never painted--no, not since the day the ship was launched.
She kept like that. And one day young Belfast MacCormick slipped a
tar-brush over her dial. Said it was idolatry. And what happened to him?
You answer me that!"

"Yes, I know," broke in one of us. "But you can't say it was along of
that tar-brush..."

"You young chaps ain't got no sense," here interrupted Uncle, his voice
evidently under control, but shaky. "I'd like to know where you were
brought up. You learn it all wrong at them schools of yours, and you
never get it right afterwards. You learn about the guts of engines and
'lectricity, and you mix it up with the tales your grandmothers told you,
and you get nothing straight. What you've got is all science and
superstition. And then you wonder why you make a mess of it. Listen! It
don't matter what you do to a figger-'ed, if you're fool enough to spoil
it. It's having it that matters. It's something to go by, and a ship
you're glad to work in."

He turned on the stoker. There was astonishment and pity in his glance.
"Look at you. In and out of a ship, and you forget her name when you've
signed off. You don't care the leavings in a Dago's mess-kit for any ship
you work in, if you can get a bit out of her and skip early."

"That's me, Uncle," muttered the stoker.

"Can you remember names, like some of us remember the _Mermus_, the
_Blackadder_, and the _Titania_? Not you. Your ships haven't got names,
properly speaking. They're just a run out and home again for you, and a
row about the money and the grub."

"Sure to be a row about the grub," murmured the stoker.

"What are ships nowadays?" he went on, raising a shaking index finger.
"Are they ships at all? They're run by companies on the make, and worked
by factory hands who curse their own house-flags. It's a dirty game, I
call it. Things are all wrong. I can't make them out. You fellers take no
pride in your work, and you've got no work to take pride in. You don't
know who you work for or what, and your ships got no names. They might
be damned goods vans. No good in a figger-'ed! Then I'll tell you this.
Then I'll tell you this. _You'll_ get no good till you learn better, my
lad."

XXI. Economics