CHAPTER XIII
The crew sober was very different indeed from the crew drunk. Their likes and their dislikes were more explicable now. There were one or two who spoke to nobody and were left alone, such as the Man with the Hat. He had made a nest of hay for himself on the upper deck; nobody knew, nobody cared, what he did when it rained; nobody was curious enough to go along to see how he weathered it when they passed through lashing rain. He had one manner for all men—one attitude—the attitude of a bulkhead. A friendly approach was met by him exactly in the same fashion as an inquisitive approach. As for openly antagonistic approach—none made it. He did not seem to want to know anything about the cattlemen. Even when at work with his half of the gang he was never known to say a word, except once when a man pushed him, and he whirled round upon him and said, low and vindictive, the one word "Quit!" And the man quit. The night-watchman halted beside him once and said "Good evening," but received no reply. He did not take the snub, stood beside the nest of the Man with the Hat, looking up at the voluminous and oily-looking smoke that rushed away from the top of the smoke stack and stretched out like a fallen pillar, diminishing across the sea.
"Well," said the night-watchman, still looking overhead, "it looks as if we might have a dirty night."
Still there was no reply, and the night-watchman, thrusting his hands deep in his coat pockets, fumbling for pipe and matches, looked round at the Man with the Hat, and peered at him from under his cream-coloured eyebrows—then moved on with a little more haste than he usually exhibited, recovered a few paces away, and made pretence that he had only moved off to light his pipe in the lee of one of the sheep-pens. He bent down there in the attitude of a boy at leapfrog, and as he lit his pipe, expending many matches, could only think to himself: "That is a dangerous young man."
Scholar, who had no distaste for the appearance of the Man with the Hat, marching to and fro on the swinging deck later on, enjoying the pillar of smoke rolling out in the deepening purple night, enjoying the wind, enjoying the sweep of the masts that gave the stars, as they came out, an appearance as of rushing up and down the sky, commented, in passing the Man with the Hat: "Bit of wind." No reply! He thought that the wind carried his words away.
"Bit of wind, I say," he repeated. No reply. He thought the man must be deaf, so passed on and took his stand near the stern that tossed high and slid down, every slide being a forward slide, the screws whirling. He was enjoying the motion and the spindrift on his shoulders—for he was only in undervest and trousers—when up came two men of the lower deck squad, and one said to him: "Rough night." He did not feel inclined to talk with them, but, a little sore from what might have been a snub forward (for the Man with the Hat might not be deaf), he put a certain warmth into his nod and smile in response. The two came closer at that. He wondered why it was that so many of these men could not chat without having the appearance of being ready at any moment to lift a hand and smite their interlocutor. They came close and plied him with questions—one a Welshman, the other from the Kingdom of Fife. Somewhat thus went the conversation:
"Whit deck are you on?"
"The main deck."
"I wondered. I never seen you on the lower deck. Where have you been?"
"What do you mean?" asked Scholar.
"Have you been in Canada?"
"Yes—part of it."
"What part?" asked the Welshman.
"Oh, I came up through Lower Ontario."
"Then you wasn't stopping there?" this from the Fifer, with a villainous scowl, as if Scholar had been trying to deceive. "You was in the States?"
Instead of giving them County and State as reply, he answered now with the bald: "Yes."
"What states?" asked the Welshman.
"Michigan."
"Whit was ye daeing in Michigan?" asked the Fifeman.
There came into Scholar's mind a brief conversation he had overheard earlier in the day. One man had told a story of something he had seen "when I was in Florida."—"What were you doing in Florida?" the Inquisitive One had asked after the story was told.—"Eh?" had said the man who had been in Florida, with a note of warning.—"I asked you what you were doing in Florida?" the Inquisitive One had returned, with a showing of the teeth.—"Ask my elbow!" had been all the answer to that, spoken as if each word was a knife-thrust. Scholar felt himself out of his sphere. He had no practice in saying: "Ask my elbow!" in that tone, or in any tone; and it seemed to him the requisite reply now. As he paused, wondering how to fob off these two catechists, the Fifer said, with a curl of his lip: "You're getting it now, then."
"Getting what? I don't understand you."
"Oh, you understand all right."
Scholar's eyelids came slightly together. He wished he knew how to act in this society, found himself squaring his chest a little, found that his jaw was tightening. At this juncture Mike appeared on deck, hitched his belt, came rolling along towards them, drew up alongside and yawned loudly, stretching himself, raising his elbows in the air, and clasping his hands behind his head. Then, leaning forward between the two catechists, he spat out into the flying scud, turned his big back on them, hitched his belt again, and said to Scholar: "Bejabbers, it's cold! Let's have a quarter-deck walk, Scholar."
Scholar fell in step with him. At the end of their walk, when they turned, he was aware, without looking too keenly, that the two men of inquisitorial mind were feeling highly vindictive; but the end of their return walk bringing them again close to these two, Mike took a brief farther step to the taffrail, swinging back largely.
"What was them two saying to you?" he asked, as they walked forward once more.
"Oh, just asking questions about where I had been, and all that sort of thing."
Mike gave a "Huh!" of disgust. They wheeled, and began the return balancing walk to the poop just in time to see "them two" going down the companion-way. Mike brought up against the taffrail at the end of their march this time, and leaning back on it, said he: "I tell you what it is, Scholar. Them fellers think they're better than us cattlemen. They're tradesmen. I've seen enough—I don't need to listen to all they're saying, after what you tell me. They're tradesmen; indade, I expect they're ruddy plumbers. They've spotted you, you see. They're thinking to themselves: 'Here's a fellow on board here, and in the Ould Counthry we'd be putting gas pipes in his father's house, and he's down now, and we'll kick him.' Just the same way they would try to kick us too, if they didn't think we was down already, beyant the likes of them to kick," he added in a grim tone, "if they didn't know that we knew how to fix them. If they come prying at ye again, Scholar—listen now to what I'm tellin' ye: Turn yourself around sideways to them, and says you to them, says you: 'Ask me elbow!' says you. And if they shoves their face up against you, says you: 'I'll spit in your eye if you shove your face at me like that!' And hit, Scholar, hit! It's different with the likes of us. You came in among us like a man; anybody could see you wasn't accustomed to us. Now you know what I mean—you understand?" said Mike, for he felt there was more in his mind than he could express. "I would rather go on a boat with you, Scholar, than with thim, if it was a case of taking to the boats; and if it was a row on the waterfronts I'd rather have you with your back to the wall with me than them plumbers. You was born different, and you don't understand thim—ye see what I mane," and he waved his hand. "But you would niver roll a shipmate; and if it came to the bit, I can see it in your eye, Scholar, you'd hang on like a bulldog."
Scholar felt a great friendliness in his heart to this man, though he feared he could not quickly learn the lesson, and would have to think out some method of his own. The "spit in your eye" method of address was foreign to him as yet. Mike had been shouting towards the end, for the wind was rising; but now he paused a spell, and his gaze roved round the night and its stars. He drew a deep breath and returned to matters mundane.
"That watchman will have to keep his eyes open to-night," he said. "He's another of them." He frowned, looking along the decks forward. "I wonder if that feller wi' the big hat is along there yet—like a dead burrd in a nest. He's blamed unsociable, that feller in the big hat," he commented. And then: "Oh, I don't blame him if he wants to be that way."
"Perhaps he's afraid of being asked questions," suggested Scholar, laughing.
"Him! No, it's different with him. I said: 'Good evening mate,' to him the other night there, and he pays no attintion. And I looks at him, and he gives me the look—you know what I mane; so I says to him, says I: 'All right, shipmate,' I says. 'All right, if that's the way of it. I know now, anyhow,' says I to him, says I. He's a great lad, ye know. I was hearing about a bit of a spar him and the cook had." He considered the darkened deck. "Yes, he could fix them two plumbers all right that was asking you questions."
Scholar had a certain depression in his heart. Mike was perhaps aware of it.
"Oh, I'd rather have you than him any day, all the same," said Mike, as if in response to a spoken regret at inability to learn the ways of the society on board. "I think I'll turn in now. Remember what I was telling ye about them gas-fitters."
Mike rattled down the companion-way, but Scholar remained on deck. A faint sound of voices came from below, now and then a laugh. The decks throbbed with the everlasting engine; a hissing and a scudding went along the weather side; a sheep snuffled and bleated; a little while ago fresh lashings had been put round their pens, tarpaulin dodgers protecting the tops. There seemed to be nobody about; here and there a lozenge of golden light, of deck lights, showed. The night was fallen almost as dark as the smoke from the smoke-stack. The Glory tossed and slid, tossed and slid onward; spray rattled with a sound like handfuls of shot on the tops of the sheep-protecting tarpaulins. From forward the sea's assaults began to sound more loudly, with many a resonant clap, and then the rattling as of grape shot followed. Scholar thought he would go below, among his fellows. Friendliness was very dear to him. It was only prying and worming into him that ever caused his jaw to tighten, his eyes to narrow, as he wondered what the stage directions might be.