Wide Courses | Page 8

for a day or two, won't it?' why, the captain of
the yard would have said, 'Why, yes, sir, let 'em have it.' But he hadn't
yet sized up this new commandant. He only knew he had the reputation
of being a martinet aboard ship, and now came this formal letter with
its endorsement and right away the yard captain said to himself, 'He's a
strict one--an endorsement on it already, and that Savannah captain, he
must be a strict one, too. What are they trying to do--trying to catch me
below when I ought to be on deck? I guess not.' He had heard of chaps
that you thought you were safe with and you stretched a point or two to
help them out, one of those little things that anybody would think
would get by all right; and then, when something went wrong, they'd
turn around and say, 'Why did you allow this?' and you had no
authority to show why you did allow it. There was that last case at
League Island, and a friend of his, only the year before. There were two
damaged rubber raincoats and a pair of old rubber boots, and the
commandant that time had said to his friend: 'See here, I'm tired of
looking at those things. Why don't you auction 'em off some day and
get rid of 'em?' And the captain of the yard's friend got busy and
hectographed letters were mailed to all the junk-dealers in the city, and
posted in the post-office and custom-house corridors, and the sale
advertised in the local papers, according to the law. And after the sixty
days required by the law, they were auctioned off with some other junk.
There were thirteen people attended the sale, but only one bid, and that
from a little stooped fellow with the beard of a prophet, who offered
sixty-seven cents for the lot, and took it off in a two-wheeled hand-cart

he'd brought with him. And they turned in the sixty-seven cents,
together with the bill for advertising--six dollars and seventy-five
cents--and considered they had done quite a stroke of business. But
back comes a letter from the Bureau of Profit and Loss--or so the
captain of the yard said he thought it was--wanting to know who gave
them authority to advertise and sell the property of the United States
without authority; and before the inquiry was concluded there were
three of them rolled through a G.C.M., and the captain of the yard's
friend was broke. And writing him about it, his friend had closed his
letter with: 'Don't ever, on your life, have anything to do with any
condemned property without you know where you're at every minute.'
"And this yard captain didn't intend to, and so he added Endorsement
No. 2, saying he had no authority, and returned it to the commandant,
who sent it back, with Endorsement No. 3, asking to be informed, and
so on, and the yard captain tacked on Endorsement No. 4, respectfully
suggesting that in compliance with regulations, page 11,336, section
142, paragraphs 24-27, or whatever it was, that it be referred to the
Bureau of Replies and Queries at Washington. Which it was, and they
returned it to the yard, this time to the yard master, for further and more
specific information. And the yard master, after locking it in his safe
and going home and sleeping on it overnight, glued on an endorsement
that you couldn't have convicted a fish of swimming by, and hoisted it
over to the yard captain bright and early in the morning.
"By this time the yard captain was beginning to believe that some
politician was after his job, and if so--Well, they'd have to snap 'em
over pretty fast to catch him playing too far off his base, and he slid it
back to the Bureau of Replies and so forth, who passed it on to the
Bureau of Odds and Ends, where it steamed in and out among a lot of
swivel-chairs, who were not to be upset easily. They put in a couple of
heavy-eyed weeks on it, and rolled it back finally to the commandant
for further information. Above all, before an intelligent judgment could
be rendered, they especially desired to be informed where the hose
came from originally.
"Well, the poor commandant didn't know where the hose came from
originally. It might be from any one of three ships that had been lying
to in the dock just before the _Savannah's_ request was received; a
battleship, a cruiser, and a beef-boat they were. But he supposed he had

to do something about it, and so he looked up the latest orders. The
beef-boat was due back in the yard in a few days; but she rated only a