"I asked where we had anchored, seeing no sign of life ashore, and they told me it was the Bar. We must wait for high water. Away ahead was the bar buoy, a white blob on the water. I stood leaning against a stanchion trying to sense the atmosphere of the place until the Second called me, for there was something to do. There was always something to do in that terrible old ship. I went down, and together we wrestled with the dynamo-engine, a cheap contraption with a closed crank chamber full of muddy oil which was supposed to splash into all the bearings, and didn't. We needed a washer, a special sort of thing. The old one was worn out. We needed screws, too, to fasten it with, small brass screws with flat heads that sank in out of sight. When I asked where these were coming from if we hadn't got them on the ship, the Second said with some asperity, that it would be my job to make them on my anchor watch that night. I was surprised at this and made some remark about getting them from ashore, and it so tickled the poor over-worked Second that he stood up suddenly, spun round towards the reversing engine and broke into peals of hysterical laughter. I shall never forget the sight of him as he stood there in his sodden, filthy singlet and dungarees, his arms knotted and burned and bruised, his common little face twisted into an expression of super-human scorn. For a single moment he was sublime, lifted out of himself, with the mere effort of pouring contempt upon my ignorance. He tried to put it into words, and sputtered. He looked as though in a trance and some stormy spirit was struggling within him. The sweat ran off us in streams as we stood there in the light of a couple of slush-lamps flaring in the draught from the stokehold door. Then he abruptly abandoned his search for vitriolic language and rushed into the store for a piece of brass rod. It was a curious performance. I was impressed. I realized in a dim way that there was no longer a hardware shop round the corner. The making of those screws was nothing in itself, but it was the principle behind it, the principle of never being stumped. And these rough, uncultured, north-countrymen were my teachers. The Chief fixed me with his one good eye at lunch. 'We don't get things from ashore in this employ,' he observed, and left me to soak it in.