I even hoped
I should. I knew the worst of him now, and forty minutes is not an
unreasonable time. Yes, I distinctly hoped. . . .
But not a bit of it. When I presented my self to be examined for master
the examiner who received me was short, plump, with a round, soft face
in gray, fluffy whiskers, and fresh, loquacious lips.
He commenced operations with an easy going "Let's see. H'm. Suppose you
tell me all you know of charter-parties." He kept it up in that style
all through, wandering off in the shape of comment into bits out of his
own life, then pulling himself up short and returning to the business in
hand. It was very interesting. "What's your idea of a jury-rudder now?"
he queried, suddenly, at the end of an instructive anecdote bearing upon
a point of stowage.
I warned him that I had no experience of a lost rudder at sea, and gave
him two classical examples of makeshifts out of a text-book. In exchange
he described to me a jury-rudder he had invented himself years before,
when in command of a three-thousand-ton steamer. It was, I declare, the
cleverest contrivance imaginable. "May be of use to you some day,"
he concluded. "You will go into steam presently.
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