This master of a ship I remember first as a slim lad, with a shy smile,
and large hands that were lonely beyond his outgrown reefer jacket.
His cap was always too small for him, and the soiled frontal badge of
his line became a coloured button beyond his forelock. He used to come
home occasionally--and it was always when we were on the point of
forgetting him altogether. He came with a huge bolster in a cab, as
though out of the past and nowhere. There is a tradition, a book
tradition, that the boy apprenticed to the sea acquires saucy eyes, and
a self-reliance always ready to dare to that bleak extreme the very
thought of which horrifies those who are lawful and cautious. They
know better who live where the ships are. He used to bring his young
shipmates to see us, and they were like himself. Their eyes were
downcast. They showed no self-reliance. Their shyness and politeness,
when the occasion was quite simple, were absurdly incommensurate even
with modesty. Their sisters, not nearly so polite, used to mock them.

As our own shy lad was never with us for long, his departure being as
abrupt and unannounced as his appearance, we could willingly endure
him. But he was extraneous to the household. He had the impeding
nature of a new and superfluous piece of furniture which is in the way,
yet never knows it, and placidly stays where it is, in its wooden
manner, till it is placed elsewhere. There was a morning when, as he
was leaving the house, during one of his brief visits to his home, I
noticed to my astonishment that he had grown taller than myself. How
had that happened? And where? I had followed him to the door that
morning because, looking down at his cap which he was nervously
handling, he had told me he was going then to an examination. About a
week later he announced, in a casual way, that he had got his masters
ticket. After the first shock of surprise, caused by the fact that