engine may spell destruction, and then demanding through a megaphone why
she does or does not do so and so. I have learned more navigation and
ship-handling since being over here than in all my previous seagoing
experience. In the old ante-bellum days one hesitated to get too close
to another ship, even in daytime, far more so at night, even with the
required navigation lights on. Now, without so much light as a glowworm
could give, we run around, never quite certain when the darkness ahead
may turn into a ship close enough to throw a brick at.

However, I am back in the ranks again now, as the captain has come back
and resumed command.


OCTOBER 9.

[Sidenote: Job of an executive officer is thankless.]

You must not be resentful because of things you have gone through,
unappreciated by those perhaps for whom you have undergone them. It is
one of the laws of life, and a hard law too, but it comes to everybody,
either in a few big things or a multitude of little ones. Do the people
who keep the world turning around ever get due recognition? I was
thinking in much the same resentful vein myself to-day, in my own small
way, how thankless the job of an executive officer is; how you never
reach any big end, or even feel that you have made progress, but just
keep on the job, watching and inspecting and fussing to keep the whole
personnel-matériel machine running smoothly, and knowing that your
recognition is purely negative, in that, if all goes well, you don't get
called down. And then I calm down and realize that it is all in the
game, and that it is the best tribute so to handle your job in life that