Page:In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories.djvu/250

238 All that can be known at present is, that, when the fog lifted, the splendid steamer Dartonia was lying at anchor in the bay, having missed the tide, while the Arrowic was nowhere to be seen. If the fog was too thick for the Dartonia to cross the bar, how, then, did the captain of the Arrowic get his boat out? The captain of the Arrowic should be taught to remember that there are other things to be thought of beside the defeating of a rival steamer. He should be made to understand that he has under his charge a steamer worth a million and a half of dollars, and a cargo probably nearly as valuable. Still, he might have lost his ship and cargo, and we would have had no word to say. That concerns the steamship company and the owners of the cargo; but he had also in his care nearly a thousand human lives, and these he should not be allowed to juggle with in order to beat all the rival steamers in the world."

The above editorial is taken from the columns of the New York Daily Mentor. The substance of it had been cabled across to London, and it made pleasant reading for the captain of the Arrowic at Queenstown. The captain didn't say anything about it; he was not a talkative man. Probably he explained to his chief, if the captain of an ocean liner can possibly have a chief, how he got