CHAPTER IV
Like unto a river in an arid land, like unto a river that dwindles instead of increases, was the "Push" that headed for the Glory. Smoke came, black and oily, into the electric-lighted night from her smoke-stack; the cattle were all on board, but the tugs were not yet alongside. The absence of the tugs sent many of the men back again. Still, there was a sprinkling aboard.
Scholar found his way to the cattlemen's quarters, a large safe of a place under the ringing iron poop, with bunks all round the walls and all over the floor space, the latter ones fixed between iron stanchions that ran from floor to ceiling. The place smelt already of fresh cattle and of beer. Coming down the companionway to it, it seemed that the few who were there were rather dropping an ordinary word into strings of swear-words, than dropping a swear-word into their speech. Men lay here and there, men sat here and there on bunks. Some he recognized as having been at the signing-on; some faces were new to him. Somebody asked him with many oaths who he was, what he wanted; somebody else informed that inquirer that he must be drunk not to recognize the man. One man deplored that the money was all gone, and there could be no more drink; another voice announced that that didn't matter, and need not be brooded over, being beyond mending. Scholar, looking round, noted that on various of the unoccupied bunks there lay some trivial article of apparel—on one a sock, on another a cap, and on another one half of a pair of braces! Somebody fell down the stairs and yelled, and a voice said: "Take that, then!" Men rose upon their elbows and blinked; some rolled to their feet, rolled to the door. There were sounds of wild scrimmage up and down the stairs. Scholar noticed that many men seemed to take all this for granted; even men whom it would be more fair to call "oiled" than drunk merely gave ear and reclined again. The sounds of fighting waxed and waned, ceased, dwindled out, abruptly began again, above—on the stairs. Now and then the combat surged into the cabin, or a fringe of it, other men coming down the stairs evidently taking sides in the original fight. One of them reeled in, holding his head, sat down on a bunk, looked at his knuckles, shook his hand, and blood dropped from it. He had evidently given a blow, and had evidently received one, for his eye rapidly disappeared as the flesh around it puffed.
Scholar felt a sense of relief when the great bulk of Mike appeared in the shadows outside; yet when Mike fairly entered, and was fully revealed in the hard glare of electric light that lit the place, he knew not whether to be relieved or otherwise. Mike seemed to have grown another inch, to have swelled, broadened, two or three; his eyes seemed at once bleared and brightly dancing.
"Hallo, Scholar!" he hailed. "Have you claimed your bunk?"
Scholar did not understand.
"Put something on your bunk," said Mike. "Something that 'tain't worth nobody's while to steal."
"'Ere yer are—reserved seats!" shouted Cockney, who had been asleep, and now awoke.
Mike looked at a top bunk near the door and climbed on to it. Scholar sat down on a lower one in the middle of the deck. Men came and went. Several ugly pickpocket-faced youths clattered into the cabin, wandered round looking at the bunks and the sleepers.
"I'm sorry I signed on!" grumbled one. "Didn't know it was quarters like this."
He strolled round the cabin and went out. Mike sat up.
"Scholar, young feller," he said, "Scholar, young feller—listen to what I'd be tellin' ye. When ye see fellers come in, and when ye hear them say they're sorry they signed on the ship watch your pockuts. They haven't signed on at all. They've only come aboard to see what they can steal."
"Is Montreal Mike—is Montreal Mike there?" called a voice from above.
"It's me ould friend," said Mike, swung to the floor, swayed out.
"Come and have some more, Mike," said the voice above. "She won't sail till four."
"Come ashore!" called Mike to Scholar.
"No, thanks."
"All right, then—watch your pockuts and keep an eye on my bunk. I haven't reserved it. Tell thim it's Montreal Mike's, and he'll burst any man he finds sitting on it."
There was a hailing on deck, a phrase repeated; it drew nearer, came down the stairs, a chorus of: "Not sailing till four!" and a general exodus from the cabin. Scholar stretched out upon his bunk—and repented him that he had invited Mike and the others ashore, starting them upon their jamboree. Nor could he ease himself by thinking that if he had not done so someone else would; not even the thought that sooner or later they would have gone ashore of their own accord, finding that the others had left work, soothed him. The place rang like the inside of a drum as the departing feet clattered over the deck. The volume of sound died, the hammer of heels was intermittent. More men, or youths, such as Mike had warned him of, came down into the cabin and roved, searching, round it. Suddenly a man in one of the mid-deck bunks—a top bunk—sat up and wailed: "Ma valise—gone—pooh!" The half-dozen remaining sleepers awoke, sat up and asked him what he was jabbering about. He waved his arms in a forward gesture, signifying disappearance, flight.
"Ma valise—gone!" he repeated.
"He had a valise! Gee! Here's a feller had a valise!"
"Well, didn't yer never see a feller with a valise before?"
They rose and crowded round the bunk of the distracted Frenchman.
"When did yer miss it, Pierre?" asked one.
"Valise—gone!" said the Frenchman.
"When did you miss it? Long ago?"
"Valise—gone! Pooh!"
"'E can't talk English! Let me try," said Cockney. "Wen your valise gone, heh? Long time—you sleep? Wen you miss, heh? Wen your valise pooh?" and Cockney very seriously imitated the gesture that signified disappearance.
The Frenchman sat up and stared at him; the other well-meaning drunkards clustered round, waiting the reply to Cockney's question.
"Gee! Can't anybody talk his lingo? Where's that feller Jack—Boston Jack? He can talk it."
"Liverpool Jack you mean—a long, thin feller. Walks like this." The speaker drew up his jacket behind so that it wrinkled round his waist, and canted back his shoulders.
"That's 'im. He can quelle-heure-est-il all right."
It struck Scholar that the Frenchman's English might be none so bad.
"Have you been asleep?" he asked.
The Frenchman looked at him with something of astonishment.
"Yes, I sleep," he replied. "Some time, I know not how long." He put his hand to his watch pocket, then sat bolt upright again. "My watch!" he screamed. "My watch gone! Pooh!" and he waved his hands.
Cockney was now hanging stupidly round one of the stanchions at the foot of the Frenchman's bunk, looking on as might a drunk doctor at a patient.
"Your watch pooh?" he said. "O, isn't that a 'ell of a shame! I once 'ad a watch meself." He slipped down the stanchion as though it were a greasy pole, so far as the top bunk would allow him, and laying his forehead on the back of his hand made a sound as of anguish. The Frenchman's eyes were upon him, staring; he looked at Scholar; he pointed a finger at Cockney's bowed head.
"Dronk? Eh?" he said. But he was not really thinking about Cockney's state. "What I do?" he asked of the rivet-studded ceiling, and answered himself: "Nozing!"
"Was there anything important in your valise?" asked Scholar.
"Important? Suit of clothes, for go home."
One of the men clapped his shoulder.
"Never mind, Pierre," he said. "Never mind. You've a shoot of clothes on. What's the matter with them? They're all right!"
Pierre just glanced at this man, and went on to Scholar: "Lettairs—from my vife."
Cockney had recovered sufficiently by this to raise his head and explain to the others, as if translating: "That's his wife! 'E's got a wife! Too bad."
"Militar' papers," said the Frenchman.
"You come ashore with me," advised Scholar.
"Ashore?"
"Yes, we'll go to the police office."
"Police—eh? Non, non! Not leesten. 'Valise gone!' they say. 'You go with cattle? No matter!'"
It struck Scholar that there was much truth in this. One of the men seemed to see it otherwise.
"You go with this fellow, Pierre," he said. "You go police with this fellow. He talkee alla same upper ten. You savvey? You savvey toff in disguise?"
"Toff? Oh, me elbow!" shouted somebody, which seemed an insulting phrase in the society in which they moved. There was an offer, on Scholar's behalf, to paste a face because of it, an acceptance, a scrimmage. "Don't! Don't! Don't!" cried Scholar, and they stopped, drew apart.
"We'll go ashore," he said again to the Frenchman.
"No, no matter. They say," and Pierre waved a hand at the recent fighters and the watchers of the fighters, "even if they leesten—'No good; bottom of the dock!' Hay? No matter!" and he lay back again.
There was a slight movement of the ship that caused the "Push"—those that were left of it—to stagger. Somebody outside said: "We're off! Is the push aboard? Where's Jack? Where's Johnnie? Where's Mike?"
"Mike, is it?" answered a voice. "Here he is. Who is the man that has a valise?" and he appeared in the doorway with a cut across his forehead from the hair to the temple. He was carrying a small suit-case.
"Glory!" shouted Cockney. '"Ere's yer old valise, Pierre!"
"Ma valise!"
"Is it yours? Well, if ye had been an Englishman, or a Scotsman, or an Irishman, or a Bostoner, I would have had to hit ye for havin' a valise, but seein' ye're a Frenchman and all alone like, here's your ruddy trunk!" and he laid it upon the bunk.
"Your head's bleedin', Mike," said one of the men.
"Is it me head?" asked Mike. "So is me fist. I met the spalpeen runnin' down the gangway when I'm runnin' up. 'Where ye goin' wid the trunk?' I says, and he swings it up and hits me over the head wid it, and I knocks his teeth out for him. Whin ye see luggage goin' off a ship after the Blue Peter's up, its a good rule ivery toime to grapple wid the man that's carrying it."
There was a rattle of heels again overhead, a fresh outcry; sounds of another scrimmage came down to them. For a moment it seemed Mike heard a call to battle; then he remembered his dignity.
"D'ye hear them?" he said. "D'ye hear them? A scrappin', disorderly crowd!"