CHAPTER VII
The two bosses looked at their men, observing how some stood erect, if bleary, but how others swayed and propped themselves against taffrail or neighbour.
"I think," said Candlass, "if you have the bigger bunch, Rafferty, that I've the pull on you for the sober ones."
"Oh, indeed," answered Rafferty. "They'll be sober and sorry before we strike Liverpool." Some of the men flinched, and some showed their teeth in wry smiles; one or two, men of the order of Jack, stuck hand in jacket pocket easily, cast their heads back, and smiled secret smiles at the river.
"Those of you that are sober," said Candlass to his gang, "come forward." And he walked away. He was taken at his word; not all followed. Half-way along the deck he turned and glanced meditatively at those who elected to call themselves drunk, and as he glanced at that little party thus it became aware of him, and was troubled, and one or two more disentangled themselves and followed him. There was a slight puckering upward of his under lip as he considered each of these, and to each he delivered a brief nod, and they knew they were marked men. Rafferty had other ways of doing it.
"Drunk and sober," he said, "get forward!" and shepherded them before him, along the passage-way between the sheep-pens on the other side. One man turned and looked at him insolently; and Rafferty, elbowing ahead, plucked his sleeve, and leaning forward, whispered in his ear, then thrust him along the deck violently.
"What did he say to you?" asked another.
"I'll tell you what I said to him," said Rafferty, "and to you," he added as if biting the words. And stepping up close he muttered something with a virulent expression. The men crowded forward, growling.
"What did he say?" they asked.
One of them—he who was the subject of Rafferty's second whispered advice—explained: "He said: 'I'll not give you a chanst to make any reports, if that's in your mind. I'll get ye alone between decks, and you'll be having an accident. Somebody will find ye had a severe fall.'"
"Come hon!" cried Cockney, for the men delayed again. "Come hon!"
"Who do you think you are?" said the man whose eye Cockney caught as he spoke.
Cockney, a mere "straw boss," had no scruples. He leapt at the man, both hands at his neck tight, crashed him to the deck and knelt violently in his stomach.
"Talkin' ter me!" he said, coming erect, and the gang moved forward, while he who had fallen sat up, gasping for breath.
"Shake a leg!" ordered Rafferty, behind, and the last men, at sound of that voice, hastened forward, then delayed again, made a jam. It was Jack and Jack's partner who were the cause of that; and it was intentional on their part. Rafferty's eye sighted an end of wire rope. He lifted it and whirled it down upon the back of the last man.
"He hit me!" yelled the man.
"Get on!" said Rafferty.
A man ahead pushed Jack's partner.
"Gettin' me blimed fer this," he said. "It's you."
"Oh, you coward!" sneered Johnnie.
"Me?" And the man who had been called "coward" smashed his fist into Johnnie's face. A fierce fight followed; they reeled to and fro, falling this way and that about the sheep-pens. This was a different matter for Rafferty. He charged upon both.
"Come siperate!" he shouted, but they did not come separate. With the wire rope he flailed them till one relaxed and fell over, moaning, among the sheep. Johnnie turned, belligerent still, but crash on his knuckles came the wire rope, and he was disabled. And on went all again, sullen, and some in pain. Candlass's gang had already disappeared forward and gone down to the main deck.
"Can you work a donkey-engine?" said Candlass to Scholar.
"I might manage," answered Scholar. "Looks fairly simple, if you show me how. Hate machinery, all the same." He smiled.
The Man in the Hat looked at both so expressionless that Scholar took the lack of expression to signify contempt.
"You?" asked Candlass, elevating his brows.
"I guess," said the Man with the Hat, and strolled over to the engine.
"All right, Mike. Get busy there—get up that hay."
Rafferty's yelling gang came down to the main deck, and passed on, with more friction on the way, to the lower deck. Candlass watched it, head on side, watched it meditatively as it progressed a few yards at a time; had the faintest little snort and a pucker of the corner of his lips, as some particularly insolent one received the wire rope, for Rafferty had now cast aside all technical scruples. Cockney was in his element. Jack swung along, his handsome and evil face sneering—a sneer that Cockney averted his eyes from quickly each time that he encountered it as he played lieutenant to Rafferty. They descended somehow or other into the hold, going down like frogs. Some seemed to be kicked over. Jack's partner, Johnnie, went down the ladder with one hand thrust in his jacket as in a sling. He turned at the ladder and looked at Cockney, who stood there to see all below, went over very self-collectedly, raising his head at Cockney and then at Rafferty, something like a duck after spooning water. Candlass's gang above, looking over, opined each to each that there was going to be a hot time in that half of the "Push." They were already, though they knew it not, under the influence of their mysterious boss. Even their voices were more subdued.
"O!" said Cockney, suddenly. This was to the man in the long coat. He stood aside to let him go down with plenty of space to manage his coat-tails and the buckles of his leggings. Even Rafferty slackened his grip on the wire rope, put a steadying hand on the top of the ladder, and watched the descent with an "Aisy, me lad!" as if me lad was a valuable cow.
There was a hiss of steam, a rattle of cogged wheels; and two hooks at the end of a chain swung down. "Out below!" went the cry above. Somebody below yelled up: "All right! I'll paste you later when I see you!"—"Get on with your work!" roared Rafferty. "I see you sitting there on them bales underneath. Roll them out." Up came the bales, and down anon swung the hooks; up again came the bales. Once the hooks slipped, the bales fell, one nearly on a man. At that Candlass disappeared from the main deck, reappeared presently on the lower deck, went over the hatch-side half-way down the ladder, and stood there looking at the gang below. Rafferty made no objection. "A dirty, drunken crowd," was all he volunteered. "It would sober some of them to have a bale on their head." Candlass climbed up again after exerting his influence by merely being there, and flicking his hands together as he came to the deck, remarked: "They'll all be sober before long, and no excuse." This saying was passed round from one to another. It suggested, as those who knew Candlass of yore agreed, that Candlass had his own point of view, and that only upon a man who had full use of his faculties would he be utterly severe in case of wrong-doing. Those whom he had "marked down" felt troubled in their hearts, as do discovered truants whose names have been handed in to the Head.
"Let me have an axe up," said Candlass presently, on the main deck again, looking down at Rafferty. Rafferty glared round for his axe, forgetting where he had put it, found it, and Candlass, turning to his men, gave a jerk of his head to one of the marked youths, and pointed down at the axe.
"Do you mean that I've got to go down for it?" asked the young man.
Candlass's lips tightened for all reply, and he seemed to read the man's eye. The man hastened away to the deck below, and when he returned with the axe Candlass looked at him again thoughtfully, then pointed to the bales strewn on the deck.
"Do you mean——" began the man, and his face was insolent.
Candlass pointed to the bales again, and the man walked over to them and began to smite upon the wires, which sprang apart.
"Here, the rest of you," said Candlass sharply, "just hustle that hay all along the alleyways."
"Is that enough hay on your deck, Candlass?" came Rafferty's voice.
"That will do," Candlass replied, and then quietly, at least comparatively speaking, and certainly expeditiously, to and fro on the main deck went Candlass's men, carrying the hay. They even began to be jolly at their work, throwing the fodder each to each, and the great horned beasts strained their necks and lowed, horns meeting horns across the alleyways. The men had to arm themselves with sticks to beat back the heads, for the armfuls that were carried to the extreme ends were sorely diminished by snatchings on the way. Candlass remained by the hatch, signing with a hand when to hoist, when to steady, when to let go, for the Man with the Hat worked on at the engine, bringing up bales to Rafferty's deck.
There was a sense of famine in the crew by the time all this work was done. The cattle were fed, but not they. The drink was out of them and there was no food in them, and they went aft to their safe of a cabin and picked, snarlingly, the men who were to go for meat and bread to the galley and the baker. They crowded, still snarling, round the tub containing the tin plates, forks and spoons, and when the food arrived they swooped round it, all talking and yelling. Mike's voice boomed high.
"Yis, youse all sober up for your chewings, but youse can't sober up fer work, some of yez."
"That's so," came Cockney's chirruping shriek. "Them that wasn't workin' jest now shouldn't git anythink ter eat."
Obscene comments on the food were voiced.
"Oh, kickin', kickin'!" said Mike. "You deserve to be given just the Board of Trade Allowance, the way youse are kickin'! Are youse aware that there's more rations there than the Board of Trade grants ye?" He turned to explain to Michael, friendly: "Them fellers whose mothers was rakin' in the ash bucket for a crust would be kickin' if they sat down to ate this day with the captain."
"He gets enough," growled a flat-browed fellow. Mike turned his head slowly and sized up that speaker.
"Well," said he, "I suppose the captain didn't spind his life lying on his back in the parks!" He paused, and nodded his head, to let that soak in, before he added: "So as to get his freezin' job up on the bridge. Do ye begrudge him his pie, damn ye?"
"Pie! Oh pie!" cried one, and there began a great talk about "hand-outs," and "sit-downs," and "throwing the feet,"—slang of American trampdom.
"Well!" said Mike, hearing all that jargon. "I thought it was cattlemen we was. We seem to be a bunch of hoboes, back-door beggars——"
"Front-door!" shouted a sharp, pale-faced little youth. "I always go to the front-door. If it's an old woman what opens I always asks her if she would ask her mother to give something."
Mike glanced at him with the appearance of one who is sick. Michael, cheered up afresh by Mike's recent friendly acknowledgment of his presence, shouted to a man who had flung his empty plate at a rat that ran on one of the pipes: "What are you doing that for? Let the rats alone."
"What for?"
The general conversation subsided so that they might listen to this one.
"To keep them friendly. You may throw your arm out of your bunk in your sleep, and if ye're always disturbing the rats they'll lay on to your hand then. But if you pay no attention to them at any time they'll understand it was an accident."
One or two laughed derisively, but they were quickly silenced by others who wagged knowing heads. Michael, thus backed, proceeded to cite cases.
"When I was on the steamship A-Chiles the rats used to come up every meal time and form up behind us clean round the table." There was a laugh. "I'm tellin' ye!" said Michael. "There's no use of me going further if ye don't believe the first of it."
"What else, then?" asked the Inquisitive One. But he was beneath Michael's notice, for Michael wore a blind on his eye and was proud of it by now.
"What was the rest?" said Mike.
"I was going to tell them," answered Michael, "but I suppose they won't believe me, that the table was short for the number of rats, and they formed up behind us——" he waved a hand behind him as if there were rats there now—"four deep."
There was another laugh, but Mike did not join in. He was staring into a corner, for something there had arrested his gaze. He turned to those near him. He thought he had got used to the freaks on board, but evidently not.
"Can any of youse tell me," he asked quietly, "what's the German Emperor doing on board?"
They looked round. Over in the corner, with a heaped plate and two biscuits, gorging, was a man whose attire would have ousted him from any hotel in Regent Street or Broadway, but who was here a disgrace the other way round—shamelessly well done; a fat, cunning-looking man with lecherous eyes. It was probably his moustache that deluded Mike, for it was a little bit reminiscent, perhaps, of that other celebrated one, so handy for caricaturists.
"It's the night watchman—the night watchman," explained the Inquisitive One, who perhaps had seen him before and instituted inquiries.
"Bejabbers," said Mike, and putting down his empty cup and empty plate, he led an adjournment on deck.