Wide Courses. James B. Connolly
off the property-books by condemning to the scrap-heap and sold in the open market to the highest bidder. There,' says our new-made ensign to our boson, 'what it says. And according to that, the admiral himself couldn't take that hose from that scrap-heap without authority. No, not if it was no more than an old shoe-lace, he couldn't.'
"'But that won't fill our water-tanks, and I'd like to use that hose, sir,' says the boson.
"'M-m!' says Mr. Renner. 'M-m! now if Mr. Shinn was aboard—' Mr. Shinn was our executive. 'But Mr. Shinn is ashore. However, I'll tell you what; I will speak to the captain about it,' and he steps inside the bulkhead and writes a message to the skipper.
He brings out the blue-book and shows the boson
"Now our skipper was a good old soul, and thought a lot of his boson, and wanted to do everything [pg 23] he could to help him out, but also, like a good many other good old captains in the service, he'd forgotten a lot of this stuff about regulations. Ordinarily—say, if 'twas anything to be done out to sea—he'd have said, 'Why, of course, Kiley; go ahead and do it,' But this was in a navy yard, ashore, and when he gets a note with something about regulations in it, he begins to haul to.
"And many a good sea-going old skipper is bluffed the same way about anything that spells regulations, you betcher. So now our good old skipper begins to tumble his hair and pull his moustache and look again at Mr. Renner's note. At last he tells the messenger to say to Mr. Renner that he will look into it and let him know.
"Another hour of studying, and the captain calls in his new yeoman that—"
"Was that you, Dallie?"
"Never mind—and cut out the personal questions, Reggie son. And remember you don't rate any more questions than anybody else here. I'm telling you the story, and I'll tell all that's good for you and just the way it happened.
"Now if this yeoman had been better acquainted with his skipper, he'd have been of some use just then. He might have suggested, in a way any of us can at times without interfering, or jarring an officer, even as topsided as a captain, how the thing [pg 24] could be fixed up without any correspondence game. But this new yeoman hadn't yet learned what his captain's steaming radius was. And the captain, having regulations on his brain and not getting the hint at the psychological time, he dictates a regulation communication to the commandant of the yard, which the new yeoman frames up just as he was told. It was a letter inquiring of the commandant the status of the condemned hose in question, and could it not be loaned for temporary use, to be returned in due season—say, next day? and so forth.
"Now the commandant was a good old soul, too, and nothing would have pleased him better than to accommodate his old friend and classmate, the captain of the Savannah; but seeing this thing come to him in such formal style, and himself being just off a three-years' cruise, and always a little doubtful about these port regulations, anyway, and wanting to do things up in a seaman-like way, he turns to his chief clerk and says, 'What do we do about this?'
"Now what the commandant meant and what he would have said, if he'd put it in more words, was: 'I want the Savannah to have the use of that condemned hose, but I suppose there are certain formalities to be observed, and your business is to know what these formalities are. Here, you attend [pg 25] to these formalities, but see that the Savannah gets the use of the hose.' That's about how he would have put it aboard ship, but he hadn't quite savvied this shore-going chief clerk at his elbow. Toward him he didn't have that same sea-going feeling that he'd have toward one of his old ship's crew.
"And the chief clerk wasn't the kind that lost sleep trying to make trouble for anybody; but he was the combination of being twenty-five years on one job and having a manager of a wife—an upstanding, marine-sergeant sort of a woman, with the beam and bows of a battleship, and an eye—oh, an eye!—and the chief clerk and his missus, they'd just finished paying for their house over in the city, and they'd had to scrimp and scrape for the Lord knows how many years to get it paid for, and there was a marriageable daughter to provide for, and his wife never let him forget that he mustn't risk their real estate or jeopardize his job or the marrying prospects of the daughter, who was just getting to where she was making a lot of desirable acquaintances. There was a young staff officer, a passed assistant surgeon, within easy range, and there was a young paymaster above the horizon, and no telling but they might yet capture one of the line, and that was all the old lady needed to be happy. But if papa was shifted to another [pg 26] city, they'd have to sell the house at a sacrifice and start making friends, all over again. They say that the chief clerk used to get his instructions every morning like it was the uniform of the day. Above all things he must never do anything that the department or any superior officer could ever censure him for.
"He was a little man, the chief clerk, with an upturned moustache he was always flattening fan-wise. 'Heels' they used to call him at the yard, because he was so sensitive about his height that he wore regular female opera-singer's heels on his shoes. Some said his wife made him wear them. Even then he only came up to the top of her ear. Well, Heels considers things now, and recollecting that this would come under the jurisdiction of the captain of the yard, and that the captain of the yard had his little spells, he says to the commandant, 'I think, sir, we'll have to refer it.'
"'Refer it? To who?'
"'To the captain of the yard, sir.'
"'Captain of the—D'y' mean the Savannah can't use that bit of rotten old hose without authority?'
"'Well, sir, you see it is like this. You see, sir, I have to do things the way they are laid down for me. The Savannah could, perhaps, use that section of hose, especially if you say so, sir, but—'
[pg 27]
"'But what?'
"'But if, sir, the captain of the yard should learn it, as he might, sir, and he should feel slighted, or if an inspector should happen along when it was in use, and discover that the items in the scrap-heap did not tally with his list, that there was a section of hose missing, that it was being used without authority by the Savannah—'
"'Oh, you and your coulds and your shoulds!' snaps the commandant. 'Give me sea duty in place of any of these shore billets any time. Aboard ship I have only to nod my head to my executive officer and a thing's done; but here—O Lord! But go ahead, make out a request, or requisition, or warrant, or whatever's necessary, and let's have it fixed up.'
"And Heels, who used to be in the army when he was young, but didn't like—or, rather, Mrs. Heels didn't like—to be told of it, he snaps his heels together, starts his arm as if to salute, but stops in time, says, 'Yes, sir,' goes off to his little desk, and typewrites Endorsement No. 1 to the back of the captain of the Savannah's letter, gets the commandant's signature, and sends the messenger with it to the captain of the yard.
"And right here was when it really got under way. You see, if the commandant had 'phoned over to the captain of the yard and said in an off-hand, [pg 28] fine-day sort of way, 'I suppose it will be all right to let the Savannah have that hose 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