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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: or plantation. This was courtesy; I supposed it was necessity.
But Mr. W---- came on watch full twelve minutes late on
this particular night,--a tremendous breach of etiquette;
in fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots.
So Mr. Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply surrendered
the wheel and marched out of the pilot-house without a word.
I was appalled; it was a villainous night for blackness,
we were in a particularly wide and blind part of the river,
where there was no shape or substance to anything, and it
seemed incredible that Mr. Bixby should have left that poor
fellow to kill the boat trying to find out where he was.
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