All this and much more did Mr. Rarx pour forth, working himself into quite a rage as he went along, and embellishing his discourse with regular handspike oaths. In the American merchant service a mate always rises to that position through the various grades from ordinary seaman up; but on British ships boys (frequently gentlemen’s sons) sign for three years as apprentices, live aft, and are taught navigation and seamanship perfectly and practically by captains who are often privileged to write R. N. R. after their names, paying, I think, about one hundred guineas for this instruction. When this course is over they are fit for second mate, and in another two years pass for mate and then master. How different in America, where the law requires no examination for a man before he goes in command of a sailing vessel! How Mr. Goggins could rise to be mate from a cabin-boy without passing through the forecastle is quite marvellous, as he has always sailed in Yankee ships. He is a very obscure individual, though, and no doubt landed in the cabin in some inscrutable manner. Mr. Rarx, on the other hand, would make a good mate of a large yacht were it not for his temper, which is very violent, and he has a way of harboring up revenge for petty trifles. We have seen more bad treatment of the men at the hands of Goggins; but my belief is that the second mate does considerable hammering on his own account the other side of the forecastle-house. It is a curious fact that so many bright men stick at second mate all their lives, never rising any higher, simply because they have never learned the use of a sextant, or how to copy figures from an epitome, for that’s all that navigation amounts to as carried on at sea. This is the great dividing line between first and second mate, which a man like Rarx could overcome in a few weeks of application. When a second mate has passed his thirty-fifth year his pristine ardor and zeal begin to wane, for by that time his aspirations for improvement are not so keen as they were; and if he is not a mate shortly afterward, he never will be. Similarly, when a mate has passed that age and never has had a command, he settles down in the capacity of chief officer, and by the time he is forty he performs his duties thereafter with no more ambition than the ox that hauls the plough. Many ship-masters refuse to take either a mate or a second mate who is more than thirty-five years old. Reference is made to sailing craft only, as men in the transatlantic mail service not infrequently reach fifty years before succeeding to one of the greyhounds. In the early days of Yankee clippers scores of men went out as master at twenty-one, and capable ones at that, as the records show.