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Updated: May 11, 2025
I happened, a short time ago, to be in company with a retired shipmaster in Liverpool, who, after spending forty-five years of his life chiefly in command of vessels from that port, had retired to enjoy the fruits of a well-deserved competency.
"We were hunting for our ship after dark," Agathemer said, "and somebody hailed us. We asked whether it was Orontides and the answer that came back was: 'Aye, Aye! We were pretty thoroughly drunk and were glad to be helped aboard and shown our beds. That's all I know." "Kingdom of Pluto!" the shipmaster cried, "my name's Gerontides, not Orontides.
Meantime do thou tell the shipmaster Geoffrey and our other folk of these tidings, and thereafter get thee all ready; and come hither to me before sunrise to-morrow, and I shall be ready for my part; and so sail we back to Langton." Therewith he turned him back into the house, and the others went their ways; but Walter sat alone in his chamber a long while, and pondered these things in his mind.
The alcalde was the politician, knowing the affairs of the world and speaking familiarly of the King and the Queen and the Marquis of Cadiz. The shipmaster said, "This time last year I was in London, and I saw their King. His name is Henry. King Henry the Seventh, and a good carrier of his kingship!" "That for him!" said the alcalde. "Let him stay in his foggy island!
He had never realized until now, in the misery of uncertainty, the hellish loneliness of a shipmaster at sea; the pride of duty, the necessity of discipline, that put him beyond all counsel, all assistance and human interdependence.
But the question is not, what a captain ought generally to do, but whether it shall be put out of the power of every captain, under any circumstances, to make use of, even moderate, chastisement. As the law now stands, a parent may correct moderately his child, and the master his apprentice; and the case of the shipmaster has been placed upon the same principle.
With bulldog persistence he besieged the court of James II for a whole year, this rough-and-ready New England shipmaster, until he was given a royal frigate for his purpose. He failed to fish up more silver from the sands but, nothing daunted, he persuaded other patrons to outfit him with a small merchantman, the James and Mary, in which he sailed for the coast of Hispaniola.
A slow regular step in the gangway interrupted his paternal reflections. Hastily buttoning across his chest the pea-jacket which he usually wore at home as a single concession to his nautical surroundings, he drew himself up with something of the assumption of a shipmaster, despite certain bucolic suggestions of his boots and legs.
The viceroy was so much pleased with this hardy action of the Spanish shipmaster, that he ordered a new vessel to be built for him at Guayaquil, ordering all the traders in Peru to be taxed for defraying the expence, as a reward for the service rendered on this occasion to the public, and an encouragement for others to behave in like manner.
It was just over two months since all this had happened, and he had thought so much about it that he seemed completely muddled as to its bearings, but still immensely impressed. "What would you think of such a thing happening on board your own ship? I've had the Sephora for these fifteen years. I am a well- known shipmaster."
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