speaking.  I say I would, and I ought to know.  Haven’t I turned out youngsters enough in my time, for the service of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft whose whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and yet must be driven afresh every day into young heads till it becomes the component part of every waking thought—­till it is present in every dream of their young sleep!  The sea has been good to me, but when I remember all these boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the sea, I don’t think I have done badly by it either.  Were I to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two days passed over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would overtake me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep voice speaking above my hat would ask:  “Don’t you remember me, sir?  Why! little So-and-so.  Such and such a ship.  It was my first voyage.”  And I would remember a bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads; or perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, because he is interested in the windlass apparently, and stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with no time at all to say good-bye.  The mud pilot on the poop sings out to me in a drawl, “Hold her with the check line for a moment, Mister Mate.  There’s a gentleman wants to get ashore. . . .  Up with you, sir.  Nearly got carried off to Talcahuano, didn’t you?  Now’s your time; easy does it. . . .  All right.  Slack away again forward there.”  The tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and churn the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting his knees—­the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella after him.  All very proper.  He has offered his bit of sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he thinks nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be very sea-sick before next morning.  By-and-by, when he has learned all the little mysteries and the one great secret of the craft, he shall be fit to live or die as the sea may decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this fool game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to have his back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear a cheery sea-puppy voice:  “Do you remember me, sir?  The little So-and-so.”

’I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in your life at least you had gone the right way to work.  I have been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty thump.  Don’t I remember the little So-and-so’s!  I tell you I ought to know the right kind of looks.  I would have trusted the deck to that youngster on