owly escaped severe punishment for showing it. I have often heard
him swearing frightfully at the men passing deals from the lighters
into the bow ports of his vessel, and declaring that God Almighty must
have had little on hand when he put them on earth. Certainly he would
have considered it an act of gross injustice if, having killed or
drowned any of them, he had been punished for it.

Mark did not know anything about history that was written in books. He
only knew that which had occurred in his own time, and the crude bits
he had heard talked of amongst his own class. He, and those who were
his shipmates and contemporaries during the Russian War, believed that
a great act of cowardice and bad treatment had been committed in not
allowing Charlie Napier to blow the forts down and take possession of
Cronstadt.[2] They knew nothing of the circumstances that led to the
withdrawal of the fleet, but their inherent belief was that a dirty
trick had been served on Charlie, and Russians, irrespective of class,
were told whenever an opportunity occurred, that they should never
neglect to thank Heaven that the British Government was so generous as
to refrain from blowing them into space.

At Cronstadt, after the introduction of steam, it became a custom for
stevedores' runners, and representatives and vendors of other
commodities, to have their boats outside the Mole at three and four
o'clock in the morning during the summer. The captain of each vessel,
as soon as she was slowed down or anchored, was canvassed vigorously
by each of the competitors. One morning, the representative of Deal
Yard No. 6, who was an ex-English captain, came into sharp conflict
with a Russian competitor. The latter rudely interrupted the
ex-captain while he was complimenting a friend who had just arrived on
having made a smart passage. All captains like to be told they have
made a smart passage, but the ardent advocate of Deal Yard No. 6 kept
welcoming his friend at great length, obviously to prevent the other
runners from getting a word at the new arrival. There arose a revolt
against him, headed by a person who was always supposed to be a
Russian, but who spoke English more correctly than his English
competitor. The ex-captain was somewhat corpulent. He was short, and
had a plump, good-natured face which suggested that he was not a
bigoted teetotaler; he had a suit of clothes on that did not convey
the idea of a West-end tailor; his dialect was bro