whether you agree with them or not--and try to get instructions
in writing if you are not sure of your man.

"(3) Always treat those above you with respect, no matter
whether they are fools or know less than yourself.

"(4) Never give information unless you are perfectly sure,
better to say you are not sure, but will look the matter up.

"(5) Never be anxious to show how quick you are by being the
first out of the shop when the horn blows. It is better on
these occasions to be a bit slow.

"Now this is a sermon by Thomas, but not one of your
father's--only that of an old cousin who has high expectations
of you and is interested in your welfare.

"Goodbye and good luck."

That little sermon by Thomas, with its admixture of shrewdness, wisdom,
and kind-heartedness, may be taken as embodying the workaday rules of
duty perfected by Andrews through a varied experience of sixteen
years--rules doubtless as faithfully observed by himself as they were
commended for the guidance of others. What may be called its horse
sense, its blunt avowal of how to play the game, helps us towards a
fuller understanding of the man, puts him in the plain light through
which, every day in view of everyone, he passed. It shows us why he
succeeded, why in any circumstances and irrespective almost of his
higher qualities, he was bound to succeed. It explains, to some extent,
what a workman meant in calling him "a born leader of men." It helps us
to understand why some called him a hard man and why he made a few
enemies; helps us also to understand why the Islander who threatened to
drop a bag of rivets on his head was treated with laughing amenity. What
Andrews demanded of others he exacted in greater measure of himself. If
at times he enforced his code of conduct with sternness, in that, as all
who felt the weight of his hand would eventually acknowledge, he was but
doing his plain duty. Did men skulk or scamp their job, they must be
shown decisively that a shipyard was no place for them. Someone
discovered asleep on a nine inch plank spanning an open ventilator must
be taught discretion. But no bullying, no unfairness--above all, no show
of malice.

If in Andrews' nature was no trace of maliciousness, neither did there
lurk in it any meanness. Not once, but a thousand times, during the past
black months, has his character been summed with characteristic
terseness by the Island shipwrights: