Wide Courses | Page 5

on folk-lore, and
could dig up a few fat volumes any time on the folk-lore of any nation
we had ever heard of. He liked to lie flat on the coffer-dam to read,
with a row of tin letter-files under his head for a rest, the electric bulb

and its shade so adjusted as to throw all the light on the page of his
book. He had done a lot of reading and writing in his time, and his eyes
were getting a little watery. If he had had his way he would have been
an author. In the hours of many a night-watch he had tried his hand at
little sketches; but somehow or other he could not catch on, he said.
Perhaps if he had tried to write as he talked, tell the things just as they
popped into his mind, he would have been luckier; but that wasn't
literature, he said, and so most of his written things read like one of
Daniel Webster's speeches. We could listen to him talking all night
long; but when he brought out one of his manuscripts, it was
good-night and hammocks for all hands.
Taps had gone this night, and so it should have been lights out and
everybody below turned in; but this, as I said, was the admiral's office,
and only separated from the admiral's cabin by a bulkhead; and even
the busiest of Jimmy-Legs don't come prowling into the cabin country
of a flagship after taps. And the flag lieutenant and the flag secretary
were pretty savvy officers who never by any accident came bumping in
on Dalton's parties at the wrong time.
There came a knock at the door, and following the knock came the
captain's yeoman. Nothing wrong with the captain's yeoman, except
that his bow name was Reginald and he was rather fat for a sailor. Also
he had ambitions, which was all right too, only we knew that privately
he looked on the rest of us as a lot of loafers who would never rise to
our opportunities. He'd been wearing his first-class rating badge a
month now, and before his enlistment was out he intended to be a chief
petty officer; which was why he was working after-hours. But the
captain's yeoman, this particular captain's yeoman, has nothing to do
with the story, except that his errand set Dalton off on a new tack.
The captain's yeoman had come for a little advice. He always was after
advice--or information. A department document had come into the
office that day with seventeen endorsements on it, and it had him
bluffed. We all laughed at the face he drew. "But," said Dalton, turning
on us, "so would most of you be bluffed if one of those winged-out
documents came at you for the first time. But you're foolish, son
Reginald, to be worrying over any little thing like that. Seventeen
endorsements! What's seventeen endorsements? I wonder what you'd
think if you'd--Sit down there and listen to me, and perhaps it'll be time

well spent. If you don't learn enough from it to get that C.P.O. you're
after, then--Well, I won't call you any names here now. Listen."
Now this story of Dalton's is a classic among yeoman, and only a
yeoman should tell it; but not even a yeoman, no matter how gifted he
may be with letter file or typewriter, has a rating to tell a story--no, no
more than anybody else aboard ship. Some of us had heard the story
before, and it had always been mangled in the telling, through the teller
not knowing all the facts, or having perhaps never met any of the
principal characters in it. But Dalton not only knew the tale from
beginning to end; he was, though he would never admit it in a crowd,
himself concerned in it. And now when he began to relate the history of
the famous length of hose-pipe, we knew that he would have it right.
"I was in--well, call her the cruiser _Savannah_--this time--"
"Were you a yeoman, Dallie?"
"Yes, a yeoman, bright Reggie boy; what else d' y' think I'd be--a
signal-girl? A good old ship, the Savannah, and were tied up to the
dock at the Navy Yard."
"Boston yard, was it, Dallie?"
"Never mind what yard it was, son. And I'll name no names, either, and
then by no accident will there be a general court-martial coming to me
some day. There were three of four other ships fitting out at the same
time, and after a while these other three ships got their stores aboard
and proceeded to sea, leaving a lot of old gear behind them on the dock.
"We were making ready to pipe water into our ship, when Mr. Kiley,
our boson, always