CHAPTER I “AFTER YOU, PILOT

“Say, George, won’t you come down to the island this afternoon and spin us a yarn? You know we’re going to Boston to-morrow to ship on board the _Bright Wing_, and we want to talk things over; perhaps you could give us some extra points.”

The speaker was Dick Gray, who had been an apprentice Sea Scout ever since the previous autumn, and was now about to take his first summer cruise on the Boy Scout ship with his two companions, Tom Sheffield and Chippie Smith. He was talking to his brother George, a midshipman just home from Annapolis for his vacation, and he naturally looked up to him as an authority in nautical matters. Besides, George had recently returned from a long trans-Atlantic cruise, and he had only just heard of Dick’s interest in the Sea Scouts. Much had happened since George’s last visit home, and Dick was eager to tell him all about it and to win his sympathy and approval.

The headquarters of the three boys was a little shack on Duck Island, which formed part of the home farm, where, for a couple of years past, they had kept their pets and hatched all the plans for their various adventures.

George was a good deal older than Dick, and had recently--within the last few days--heard a story which had impressed him so deeply that his idea of all his duties as an officer had been changed and heightened. When, therefore, Dick asked him to come down to the island and to spin a yarn to the boys, this story immediately jumped into his mind and he wondered whether he could tell it in such a way as to create in them the same feeling that it had aroused in him.

“I wish I knew more about your Boy Scout business, Dick. Can’t you tell me something about it?” he asked.

“Well, now,” answered Dick, “to pass for apprentice we have to know more knots than the Land Scouts do to pass for tenderfoot, and to swim twenty-five yards farther.”

“That isn’t exactly what I’m after,” replied George. “I understand that the Land Scouts learn more woodcraft and such things than the Sea Scouts, and that the Sea Scouts are supposed to be more at home in the water. What I would like to know is what the _Boy Scouts_ are? I met some one the other day who explained to me that there were two branches of the service--corresponding to the Army and the Navy--but he did not tell me exactly what the service itself was. Now, in the Navy, it’s our duty to defend the country by sea, and all our education is intended to make us efficient in seamanship and the art of war. The object of the whole thing is just the same in the Navy as in the Army, except that the one fights by sea and the other by land. It’s the protection and service of our country in either case, and both branches take the oath of allegiance.”

“That’s it!” said Dick eagerly. “We have an oath, too, and it’s the same oath for the Sea Scouts as it is for the Land Scouts. I guess it’s the same for Boy Scouts all over the world; although, of course, they use different words and speak in different languages.”

George asked his brother to repeat the oath, and then he remarked:

“I’m glad to know that oath, Dick. It has helped me to understand more about the whole thing.”

“I’ll get you the manual,” said Dick, “and you can look that over and see for yourself what the law is.”

“The law? Oh, I suppose that’s a sort of Regulations. Run and get me the book and I’ll come down and spin you a yarn before supper time. When do you expect the other boys?”

“At four o’clock.”

Dick ran off delighted, and hastened over to the island to put everything straight for the meeting in the afternoon. Then he came back to the house and telephoned to Tom Sheffield in the town, for fear he might possibly make a mistake in the time or forget to come, and asked him not to forget to bring Chippie with him either.

They arrived on time, sure enough; and George and Dick were already on the island to receive them. After they had squatted down on the floor of the shack, George lost no time in beginning.

“Before I begin my yarn, fellows, I want to say that I have had a good talk with Dick about the Boy Scouts, and I have also been reading carefully the scout oath and law, and other things given in the manual. I understand more about it than I did before, especially about the first point of your oath, which is: ‘To serve God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law.’ In the Navy, we have to take an oath of allegiance, too, but are supposed to serve our country principally through fighting, while you are trained to serve your country in all sorts of different ways. In the Navy and the Army we have to fight with shot and shell and cold steel; but this is not the only kind of fighting a fellow may have to do in order to serve his country. He has got to fight the _evil in himself_ in order to be trustworthy, helpful, brave, and all the other things that your scout law requires. These things that you have to learn are the very foundations of service; and, if you should engage in military work later on, your training in these things will make you far better soldiers or sailors than you otherwise would be. I can only say that I wish I had had such training before I went to Annapolis. The fact is, every man has to know how to fight, whether he is a soldier, or a sailor, or a civilian; and, unless you know how to fight against meanness, and falsehood, and cowardice beforehand, you won’t make so good a military man or so good a citizen when the time comes.”

“How about your story, George?” remarked Dick.

“All right,” replied George. “Here goes: I was staying with my chum, John Stimson, over the week-end a while ago, and, as we were going in to dinner with his father, Admiral Stimson, I stepped back at the door to let the old gentleman pass, but he held out his hand and signed for me to go first--I suppose because he was my host. As he did so, he said with a smile, ‘After you, pilot!’ Of course I walked in ahead of him, in obedience to his order, but I couldn’t make out what he meant by ‘pilot’, and the conversation was such that I could not butt in with a question about it. After dinner I got hold of John, who explained to me that it was a custom in the Navy, commemorating the act of Captain Craven of the U. S. S. _Tecumseh_ at the battle of Mobile Bay.

“John said his father was never tired of telling the story, and was sure that he would be glad to tell it to me then and there. He asked me to wait a minute while he went to his father’s study to find out, and returned in a few minutes with this message: ‘By all means,--come in right away.’

“Well, boys, I wish I could tell it to you the way the old Admiral told it to John and me. But, as I can’t do that, I’ll just give you the facts: The Confederate fleet were up in the bay, protected below by strong coast fortifications on either side. The _Tecumseh_ was the first ship in the line of Union vessels which were fighting their way up into the bay against the bombardment of the forts. Captain Craven was up in the turret with the pilot, who was pointing out the channel through the mine fields which had been carefully prepared by the enemy. But a mistake was made in the ship’s course which brought her into contact with a mine, striking her so that she went on her beam ends.

“You understand what this means?” said George, after a little pause, and he held up his two hands to indicate the angle to which the deck of the vessel would rise under the circumstances.

“Then she settled down with a kind of shivering motion and began to sink as the sea flowed in through the gash in her side.

“The inside of the turret was a small place and the two men shut up there were in close quarters. The only way out was the way they had come in, through an opening in the turret deck, like one of the manholes you see leading underground from the surface of the street. There was a little ladder in this manhole, and only room enough for one man to pass at a time. As the vessel settled and sank, it was inevitable that the water should rise in the manhole and ultimately fill the turret. There was no time to lose if either one was to make his escape from the death trap. It must have seemed a long wait to the two men as they stood facing one another and taking in their situation. But it probably wasn’t as long as it seemed before Captain Craven pointed to the manhole with the words that Admiral Stimson had quoted to me:

“‘After you, pilot.’

“You see, boys, Captain Craven had a law similar to your scout law; and, according to that, the captain of a sinking ship cannot think of saving himself until everyone else on board has been rescued. He obeyed this law of his calling without hesitation; and, when the pilot had made his escape down the manhole and been picked up and rescued, the water rose and filled the turret, and the captain went down with his ship. The whole thing could not have lasted more than a few minutes, although it must have seemed much longer; and, in that time, Captain Craven had maintained his honor and that of his country at the expense of his own life, while at the same time saving the life of another human being.”

George had realized the scene with so much vividness as he told the story, that all the three boys present felt as if they, too, had witnessed Captain Craven’s act of heroism. Dick felt, somehow, as if the opening of the manhole were right before them in the middle of the floor of the shack, and all three of them shared in his feeling. There was a long pause during which they visualized that scene in the turret of the _Tecumseh_.

George finally broke the silence:

“When the Admiral had finished, I sat back in my chair in a quiet kind of way, and after a while, the old gentleman spoke.

“‘You see, Gray,’ said he, ‘Craven only did his duty; but what enabled him to do his duty at that moment so nobly was the fact that he had done it hundreds of times before--again, and again, and again--in the ordinary affairs of his life and work. If he had been in the habit of shirking his studies, or of being mean to other fellows, or of yielding to fear in his ordinary life from day to day, he would have formed habits which would have made it difficult or impossible for him to be generous and manly when the supreme test came.’

“I couldn’t say very much,” continued George, “except to thank the old gentleman,--but I thought to myself, ‘You’re just such another one as Craven; and, if you were to ask me to cut off my finger, or my hand, I’ll be hanged if I wouldn’t do it.’

“Well, after that,” George went on, “I began to think about the Academy, and I seemed to see a thousand things that I might have done differently and better; and it seemed to me that I could hardly wait until vacation was over to get back to my work. Maybe, when you come back from your cruise, Dick will write me a letter and say how you got on, but I advise you to do the same thing that I’m going to do,--to think of that story every day and to put more push into doing the things that my oath requires.

“I suppose you fellows are going to have your meeting now, and I’ll go up to the house and unpack my trunk; I’ll see you again at supper.”

There was another pause after George had left the three boys, until finally Chippie remarked:

“I never thought of that before, fellows; but, when you do act in one way right straight along, you learn to do it better all the time. You remember a year ago I couldn’t knock up a ball decently; but I worked at it quite a lot, and the more I did it, the easier it came.”

“That’s so,” remarked Tom, “and you can knock up about as well as I can, now; but it seems kind of different with games and sports from what it does with other things that aren’t so much fun.”

“You bet it is,” chimed in Dick; “my mother gave me a letter to mail last week, and I found it in the pocket of my jacket three days after--a scout is trustworthy, eh? I tell you what it is,” continued Dick, “you know we have called ourselves a club and nobody knows it but ourselves, and we’ve been stickin’ up for each other at school and in the town when other fellows have tried to pitch into us, and that’s all right. But it seems to me that we could do more than that, and I’ll ask you two fellows to give me a dig in the ribs,--or if that doesn’t work--a punch in the nose, when you see me going to do a mean thing. I want to keep the scout law and my oath as much as I want anything, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t help me do that as well as to stick up for me when some other cove calls me names behind my back!”

Chippie and Tom looked at each other for a moment, and finally exclaimed together:

“Gee!”

“Then,” answered Tom, “why shouldn’t we all do the same thing? You know how hard it is to do things on time; and there’s no ‘being trustworthy’ unless you do. So Chippie, you and Dick just kick me out of bed when it’s time to get up, and I’ll be much obliged to you. Dad says I’m lazy, and I know he’s right, but I’ve got to learn to keep this scout law--or bust!”

All three assented cordially to the idea that they should join forces as brothers-in-arms against everything that stood in the way of their scout duty.

“I say,” cried Chippie, “this is what I call a club! And, see here, there are just three of us. Why not call it The Triangle Club?”

“And I vote,” said Tom, “we make this our motto:

“After you, Pilot!”