While his talent and ability were of the highest order, of course his rapid promotion was due to the favor of the owner of the Bellevite.
Captain Breaker, who had rather reluctantly assented to the placing in charge of the engineer department a young man of only twenty-one, had no occasion to regret that he had yielded his opinion to that of his owner.
Paul Vapoor had been found equal to all the requirements of the situation, for the judgment of the young chief was almost as marvellous as his genius.
Paul was gentle in his manners, and possessed a very lovable disposition; in fact, he was almost a woman in all the tender susceptibilities of his nature; and those who knew him best knew not which to admire most, his genius or his magnetic character.

Mr.Leon Bolter, the first assistant engineer, was thirty-six years old; and Mr.Fred Faggs, the second, was twenty-six.

But there was neither envy, jealousy, nor other ill-feeling in the soul of either in respect to his superior; and they recognized the God-given genius of the chief more fully than others could, for their education enabled them to understand it better.
Paul Vapoor and Christy Passford were fast friends almost from the first time they met; and they had been students together in the same institution, though they were widely apart in their studies.

They were cronies in the strongest sense of the word, and the chief engineer would have given up his very life for the son of his present employer.

The owner favored this intimacy, for he felt that he could not find in all the world a better moral and intellectual model for his son.
Mr.Vapoor, as he was always called when on duty, even by the members of the owner's family in spite of the fact that he seemed to be only a boy, appeared on the quarter-deck of the steamer in answer to the summons of the commander.