Three of them
were examiners in seamanship, and it was my fate to be delivered into
the hands of each of them at proper intervals of sea service. The first
of all, tall, spare, with a perfectly white head and mustache, a quiet,
kindly manner, and an air of benign intelligence, must, I am forced
to conclude, have been unfavourably impressed by something in my
appearance. His old, thin hands loosely clasped resting on his crossed
legs, he began by an elementary question, in a mild voice, and went
on, went on. . . . It lasted for hours, for hours. Had I been a strange
microbe with potentialities of deadly mischief to the Merchant Service I
could not have been submitted to a more microscopic examination. Greatly
reassured by his apparent benevolence, I had been at first very alert in
my answers. But at length the feeling of my brain getting addled crept
upon me. And still the passionless process went on, with a sense of
untold ages having been spent already on mere preliminaries. Then I got
frightened. I was not frightened of being plucked; that eventuality did
not even present itself to my mind. It was something much more serious
and weird. "This ancient person," I said to myself, terrified, "is
so near his grave that he must have lost all notion of time.
Pages:
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176