was so deep you could hear them shuddering--and the stoutest held
his breath, which is considerable feat, as I can testify, because
the stouter a fellow gets the harder it is for him to hold his
breath for any considerable period of time. Very well, then, this
is the condition of affairs. If ever there was a time when those
in authority should avoid spreading alarm this was the time. By
all the traditions of the maritime service it devolved upon the
skipper to remain calm, cool and collected. But what does the
poet reveal to a lot of trusting school children?

"We are lost!" the captain shouted,
As he staggered down the stair.

He didn't whisper it; he didn't tell it to a friend in confidence;
he bellowed it out at the top of his voice so all the passengers
could hear him. The only possible excuse which can be offered for
that captain's behavior is that his staggering was due not to the
motion of the ship but to alcoholic stimulant. Could you imagine
Little Sure Shot, the Terror of the Pawnees, drunk or sober, doing
an asinine thing like that? Not in ten thousand years, you couldn't.
But then we must remember that Little Sure Shot, being a moral
dime-novel hero, never indulged in alcoholic beverages under any
circumstances.

The boy who stood on the burning deck has been played up as an
example of youthful heroism for the benefit of the young of our
race ever since Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Hemans set him down in black
and white. I deny that he was heroic. I insist that he merely
was feeble-minded. Let us give this youth the careful once-over:
The scene is the Battle of the Nile. The time is August, 1798.