My Experience With Them Has Been That It Is Harder To
Take Care Of One Captain On A Small Boat Than Of Two Small Babies.
Of Course, This Is No More Than Is To Be Expected.
The good men
have positions, and are not likely to forsake their one-thousand-to-
fifteen-thousand-ton billets
For the Snark with her ten tons net.
The Snark has had to cull her navigators from the beach, and the
navigator on the beach is usually a congenital inefficient - the sort
of man who beats about for a fortnight trying vainly to find an
ocean isle and who returns with his schooner to report the island
sunk with all on board, the sort of man whose temper or thirst for
strong waters works him out of billets faster than he can work into
them.
The Snark has had three captains, and by the grace of God she shall
have no more. The first captain was so senile as to be unable to
give a measurement for a boom-jaw to a carpenter. So utterly agedly
helpless was he, that he was unable to order a sailor to throw a few
buckets of salt water on the Snark's deck. For twelve days, at
anchor, under an overhead tropic sun, the deck lay dry. It was a
new deck. It cost me one hundred and thirty-five dollars to recaulk
it. The second captain was angry. He was born angry. "Papa is
always angry," was the description given him by his half-breed son.
The third captain was so crooked that he couldn't hide behind a
corkscrew.
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