It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working.
Now came this shriek–
‘Here!–You going to set there all day?’
I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric
suddenness of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said,
apologetically:–‘I have had no orders, sir.’
‘You’ve had no ORDERS! My, what a fine bird we are! We must have ORDERS!
Our father was a GENTLEMAN–owned slaves–and we’ve been to SCHOOL.
Yes, WE are a gentleman, TOO, and got to have ORDERS! ORDERS, is it?
ORDERS is what you want! Dod dern my skin, I’LL learn you to swell yourself
up and blow around here about your dod-derned ORDERS! G’way from the wheel!’
(I had approached it without knowing it.)
I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my senses
stupefied by this frantic assault.
‘What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down to
the texas-tender-come, move along, and don’t you be all day about it!’
The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said–
‘Here! What was you doing down there all this time?’
‘I couldn’t find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to the pantry.’
‘Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.’
I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat.
Presently he shouted–
‘Put down that shovel! Deadest numskull I ever saw–
ain’t even got sense enough to load up a stove.’
All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and the
subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months.
As I have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread.
The moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest night,
I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and knew their owner
was watching for a pretext to spit out some venom on me.
Preliminarily he would say-
‘Here! Take the wheel.’
Two minutes later–
‘WHERE in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull her down!’
After another moment–
‘Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go–meet her! meet her!’
Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me,
and meet her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time.
George Ritchie was the other pilot’s cub. He was having
good times now; for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindhearted
as Brown wasn’t. Ritchie had steeled for Brown the season before;
consequently he knew exactly how to entertain himself and plague me,
all by the one operation. Whenever I took the wheel for a moment
on Ealer’s watch, Ritchie would sit back on the bench and play Brown,
with continual ejaculations of ‘Snatch her! snatch her!
Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!’ ‘Here! Where you going NOW?
Going to run over that snag?’ ‘Pull her DOWN! Don’t you hear me?
Pull her DOWN!’ ‘There she goes! JUST as I expected!
I TOLD you not to cramp that reef. G’way from the wheel!’
So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was;
and sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie’s good-natured badgering
was pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown’s dead-earnest nagging.
I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer.
A cub had to take everything his boss gave, in the way of
vigorous comment and criticism; and we all believed that there
was a United States law making it a penitentiary offense to
strike or threaten a pilot who was on duty. However, I could
IMAGINE myself killing Brown; there was no law against that;
and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was abed.
Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty,
I threw business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown.
I killed Brown every night for months; not in old, stale,
commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones;–ways that were
sometimes surprising for freshness of design and ghastliness of
situation and environment.
Brown was ALWAYS watching for a pretext to find fault;
and if he could find no plausible pretext, he would invent one.