“A chap in business I know (well up in the world he is now) used to tell me that this was the proper way.  ‘Always push on to the front,’ he would say.  ’Keep yourself well before your boss.  Interfere whenever you get a chance.  Show him what you know.  Worry him into seeing you.’  That was his advice.  Now I know no other boss than you here.  You are the owner, and no one else counts for that much in my eyes.  See, Mr. Massy?  I want to get on.  I make no secret of it that I am one of the sort that means to get on.  These are the men to make use of, sir.  You haven’t arrived at the top of the tree, sir, without finding that out—­I dare say.”

“Worry your boss in order to get on,” mumbled Massy, as if awestruck by the irreverent originality of the idea.  “I shouldn’t wonder if this was just what the Blue Anchor people kicked you out of the employ for.  Is that what you call getting on?  You shall get on in the same way here if you aren’t careful—­I can promise you.”

At this Sterne hung his head, thoughtful, perplexed, winking hard at the deck.  All his attempts to enter into confidential relations with his owner had led of late to nothing better than these dark threats of dismissal; and a threat of dismissal would check him at once into a hesitating silence as though he were not sure that the proper time for defying it had come.  On this occasion he seemed to have lost his tongue for a moment, and Massy, getting in motion, heavily passed him by with an abortive attempt at shouldering.  Sterne defeated it by stepping aside.  He turned then swiftly, opening his mouth very wide as if to shout something after the engineer, but seemed to think better of it.

Always—­as he was ready to confess—­on the lookout for an opening to get on, it had become an instinct with him to watch the conduct of his immediate superiors for something “that one could lay hold of.”  It was his belief that no skipper in the world would keep his command for a day if only the owners could be “made to know.”  This romantic and naive theory had led him into trouble more than once, but he remained incorrigible; and his character was so instinctively disloyal that whenever he joined a ship the intention of ousting his commander out of the berth and taking his place was always present at the back of his head, as a matter of course.  It filled the leisure of his waking hours with the reveries of careful plans and compromising discoveries—­the dreams of his sleep with images of lucky turns and favorable accidents.  Skippers had been known to sicken and die at sea, than which nothing could be better to give a smart mate a chance of showing what he’s made of.  They also would tumble overboard sometimes:  he had heard of one or two such cases.  Others again . . .  But, as it were constitutionally, he was faithful to the belief that the conduct of no single one of them would stand the test of careful watching by a man who “knew what’s what” and who kept his eyes “skinned pretty well” all the time.