NOTE II
COXSWAINS AND GALLEYS
The Captain's coxswain is always an important person. As a rule the Captain has known him for a long time, often for ten or fifteen years, and the man follows his superior's fortunes with unswerving loyalty, till he blossoms into the dignity of coxswain of the Admiral's barge, beside whom dukes are not even three a penny. He is, by virtue of his office, the smartest man in the ship, and by training becomes a clean-shaved miracle of tact and discretion. Each boat's crew have a life of their own, a little world, into which they enter, picking up where they left off, so soon as cutter or whaler leaves the ship's side; but I fancy the esprit de corps is most strongly developed in the Captain's galley. On one occasion we had been out all day fishing, and the wind forced us to row the long seven miles back to the fleet, against the tide, round rocky points fringed with conflicting currents. It was a lumpy and disheartening sea, leaden grey in the twilight except where the shoals cast up wisps and smudges of half-phosphorescent white—a three hours' journey, enlivened by the incessant dry roar and rattle of the surf around Roancarrig and the answering growl of the waves on the mainland. I watched the untiring machine digging out over the steep-pitched cross-waters; eight pair of shoulders rising and falling against the first stars and the smoke of spray about the bows; till every muscle in me ached out of sympathy. 'Thrice they were invited to rest themselves, for they had been ten hours at work, and there was six hundred pounds' dead weight of fish in the boat; and thrice they replied: 'Oh, we can jog on like this, sir.' So they jogged with never a quiver or a falter through all the tumble, and when we reached still water, under the lee of the ships, they spurted up the avenue as though returning from a call on the flagship half a mile away. I demanded of the coxswain how this thing was done.
'Oh, you get used to it,' said he. 'Besides, that wasn't anything particular. Sometimes you have the boat half full of water, jumping out and coming down like a hammer. That's the time you learn to row.'
