The Respect a Wild Animal Has for Fire

Over the next thirty days, I was made to per­form the most inane work imag­in­able, tasks strictly meant to be puni­tive. Many an evening was I forced to scrub oily decks down in the bilges, on my hands and knees, with an old brush and can of scour­ing pow­der. Or worse yet, was I made to climb atop and clean around the boil­ers, where the tem­per­a­ture often exceeded 110 degrees. Nonethe­less, I worked hard at doing just enough to make it look as if I had indeed done something.

One night, as I worked down in the bilges, scrub­bing a deck with soap ’n’ water, a third class petty offi­cer nick­named Shorty sneaked up behind me and, for what­ever rea­son, reared back ’n’ kicked me, send­ing me reel­ing across the deck where I landed flat on my face.

Rolling over onto my side, I looked him right in the eye and smiled. “I’m sorry you feel that way,“ I said, where­upon he spun around and dis­ap­peared through the hatch.

That night, I touched Shorty in much the same way St. Paul’d been touched by the suf­fer­ing of the early Chris­tians. In other words, I awak­ened Shorty to his own feel­ings, from which he fled out of fear. As a result, I earned his respect, the respect a wild ani­mal has for fire, once it has been illu­mi­nated by the light of its own feelings.

Nor did I ever report him. Given my rep­u­ta­tion onboard the ship, I fig­ured nobody’d ever believe me. Besides, in my naiveté, it never occurred to me that I could’ve had him writ­ten up for man­han­dling a sub­or­di­nate. I did, how­ever, find great sat­is­fac­tion in just know­ing that, from that moment on, I com­manded his respect as a human being.

Only later, did I learn from a First Class Boil­er­man who, out of the kind­ness of his heart, had per­mit­ted me to stand with him, for a moment, to cool off in front of a fresh air intake port, that he’d been instructed to give me the hottest and nas­ti­est work he could find.