And should this boat, a few minutes later, go whirling along in
the "Race," bottom side up, with every worker safe astride her keel,
principally because of Captain Bob's coolness and skill in hauling them
out of the water, again the last man to crawl beside the rescued crew
would be this same long-legged, long armed skipper.
Or should a guy-rope snap with a sound like a pistol-shot, and a great
stone swung to a boom and weighing tons should begin running amuck
through piles of cement, machinery, and men, and some one of the working
gang, seeing the danger, should, with the quickness and sureness of a
mountain-goat, spring straight for the stone, clutching the end of the
guy and bounding off again, twisting the bight round some improvised
snubbing-post thus checking its mad career, you would not have had to
ask his name twice.
"Cap'n Bob stopped it, sir," was sure to have been the proffered reply.
So, too, in his present occupation of pilot. It was only a few years ago
that I stood on the deck of an incoming steamer, straining my eyes
across a heaving sea, the horizon lost in the dull haze of countless
froth-caps; we had slowed for a pilot, so the word came down the deck.
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