“But the sharks?”

“Sharks?  Black boys in West Indian ports will dive all day among them for coppers.  Sharks and whales—­writers of sea stories certainly ought to pension them.  There may have been a shark who once made a meal off a sailor, but let you or me drop over the side, and if there’s one anywhere near, he wouldn’t stop racing till he was a mile away, and if any harmless slob of a whale ever killed a sailor, be sure he did it through fright.  But that’s no matter.  What does matter, though”—­Kieran halted and faced the passenger—­“are the men who did go over the side, and not within swimming distance of any pleasant sandy beach either.  ’Tisn’t every protesting seaman who finds the boss of the line on deck to back him up.  And, what’s harder, how about the men who never had the choice of going over the side?  And think of the poor creatures who got so that in time they didn’t even want to go over the side, who might have grown into honest, free men, but who, instead of that, learned only to live for the day when they too would have the power to make their inferiors stand around and cringe and whine.”

They paced the length of the deck twice before Kieran spoke again.

“They wonder at the decay of our merchant marine.  I wonder did they ever stop to think of what men—­seamen—­think of the service?  In the days of sailing ships a man going to sea met with real danger and hardship, and they developed courage and skill and character of some kind.  What training does he get to take the place of that now?  He’s a hand nowadays, a helper, a lumper—­not a sailor—­on a great big hulk to which disaster is almost impossible.”

“But disasters do happen.”

“They do, but what is the truth about them?  Nine out of ten of them have a disgraceful cause.  But the public doesn’t hear of that, because the public doesn’t go to sea—­except as a saloon passenger.  The public gets its story from the steamship company’s office—­always, and you know what kind of a story they put out—­put out through newspapers that carry their advertising.  You know what that chief clerk or that second clerk of yours would tell any inquiring outsider in case of a loss of life on one of these ships.  He’d lie and lie and lie and lie and think he was serving a good cause at that, and the papers publishing the lie would think they were serving a good cause, too—­especially the constructive organization papers, as they call themselves.  Our big steamship officers these days—­outside of the navy—­don’t get the kind of work that keeps men up to the mark, and not getting it they grow soft—­their bodies and their souls become flabby.  Engineer officers nowadays have the work cut out for them and they are doing good work, but the bridge officers are no longer men of the sea—­they’re clerks, agents in floating hotels.  And the crew take their tone from the officers.  When the commander’s weak, your whole outfit is apt to weaken, especially under a strain.”