II
It lacked two minutes to sailing time, and the passenger was in the cabin mess-room, when he heard the exclamation. "Here he comes now."
He looked through the air-port. Out on the deck was a huge fellow gazing up the dock. The passenger, who knew the big man for the boson, gazed up the dock also and saw that it was the pump-man coming; and he was singing cheerily as he came:
"Our ship she was alaborin' in the Gulf o' Mexico,
The skipper on the quarter—"
Usually it is only the drunks who come over the side of an oil-tanker singing, but this was no drunk. Drunks generally make use of all the aids to navigation when they board a ship. Above all, they do not ignore the gang-plank. But this lad wasn't going a hundred feet out of his way for any gang-plank. He hove his suit-case aboard, made a one-handed vault from dock to deck (and from stringpiece to rail was high as his shoulder), and when he landed on deck it was like a cat on his toes; and like a cat he was off and away, suit-case in hand, while those of the crew who had only seen him land were still wondering where he dropped from.
The big man plainly did not like the style of him [pg 183] at all. "Here you!" he bellowed, "who the hell are you?"
And the new-comer ripped out, "And who the hell are you that wants to know?"
"Who'm I? Who'm I? I'll show yer bloody well soon who I am."
"Well, show me."
"Show yer?"
"Yes, you big sausage, show me."
"Show yer? Show yer?" The big man peered around the ship. Surely it was a mirage.
At the very first whoop from the big man the pump-man had stopped dead, softly set down his suit-case, and waited. Now he stepped swiftly toward the big man. And to the passenger, looking and listening from the cabin mess-room, it looked like the finest kind of a battle; but just then the captain came up the gang-plank calling out, "Cast off those lines. And don't fall asleep over it, either." The deck force scattered to carry out his orders. The pump-man picked up his suit-case and went on to his quarters.
Next morning (the ship by now well down the Jersey coast and the passenger on the bridge by the captain's invitation) again was heard the carolling voice:
"Our ship she was alaborin' in the Gulf o' Mexico,
The skipper on the quarter, with eyes aloft and low.
Says he, 'My bucko boys—'"
[pg 184]
that far when the big man's hoarse bass interrupted, "Say you, what about that Number Seven tank?"
"—Says he, 'My bucko boys, it's asurely goin' to blow'"
The pump-man paused, inclined his head, set one hand back of his ear, and asked, "And what about Number Seven tank? And speak up, son, so I can hear you."
"Speak up!" The big man roared to the heavens. "Speak up! Don't tell me to speak up. Did yer clean that tank out?"
"No, I didn't clean it out."
"Yer didn't? And why in hell didn't yer?"
"Because I don't have to. But I put a couple of men to work and saw that they cleaned it out. And it was done before you were out of your warm bunk this morning."
"Who's that big fellow?" The passenger put the question to the captain.
"That's my bosun—and a good one."
"And the other? Know anything of him?"
"The singing one? Nothin', except he's the new pump-man. And I can see right now it won't be many hours afore the bosun'll beat his head off."
"You think he will?"
"I know he will. Why, look at him—the size of him, and solid's a rock."
[pg 185]
The passenger took another look over the top of the bridge canvas. He was surely a big man; and under his thin sleeveless jersey, surely a solid man. And the pump-man, in his skimpy, badly-fitting dungarees, though of good height, did not look to be much more than half the other's bulk.
"That same bosun's beat up more men than any shipping agency ever kept a record of. That's Big Bill. And if you'd ever travelled on oil-tankers, you'd 'a' heard of him. He's a whale. Take another look at him, Mr. Noyes."
Noyes took another look. The boson surely was a tremendously muscled man. He was knobbed with muscle. But Noyes had his own opinion about the two men, and he hazarded it now.
"But he's a wonderfully quick-moving fellow, that pump-man, captain. And he's surely got his nerve with him. Look at him leap across that open hatch! If he fell short he'd get a thirty-foot drop and break his neck."
"And I wish he would break his neck. And so can a kangaroo hop around, but you wouldn't pick a kangaroo to fight a bull buffalo. You'll find out the difference, if ever he tackles my bosun. And no fear my bosun won't get him. He'll get him, you see. And when they come together I'll take good care there's no interruption."
[pg 186]
"But why does the bosun hound him so? This man was no sooner aboard than the bosun began to crowd him."
"Did he? And perhaps you think the bosun of an oil-tanker's goin' to hand a man a type-written letter every time he wants to have a word with him. He's a good bosun. He knows his business, and he saves me a lot of trouble."
And what the captain did not say, but what Noyes imagined he saw in his eye, was: "And I'll be telling you pretty soon to keep to yourself your opinion of ship's matters."
When Noyes went to his room that night, it was for a stay of two days. More than a year now since he had been to sea, and the weather passing Hatteras had been bad. But now it was the fourth day out, and Hatteras was far astern, and the ship was plunging easily southward, with the white sandy shore of Florida abeam. A fine, fair day it was, with the Caribbean breeze pouring in through the air-port. The passenger shaved and washed and got into his clothes. Above him he could hear the captain dressing down somebody. He stepped out on deck.
It was two sailors who had complained of the grub, and he had made short work of their complaint. "I'll give you what grub I please. And that's good grub." That and more, and drove the [pg 187] two sailors, with their dinners on their tin mess-plates, down to the deck.
Noyes, who remembered that the company allowed fifty cents a day per man for grub, took a look and a whiff of the protested rations as the men went by. "Phew!" He ascended to the bridge. The captain turned to him. "Did you see those two? Complaining of the grub, mind you. What do they know of grub? In the hovels they came from they never saw good grub."
Noyes made no answer. He was interested just then in the pump-man, who now came strolling along and presently overtook the protesting sailors. The better to observe proceedings, Noyes took his station on the chart bridge aft. "And did you fellows think that any polite game of conversation up on the bridge was going to get you a shift of rations?" the pump-man was saying. "Don't you know that what he saves out of the ship's allowance goes into his own pocket? What you fellows want to do is to go and scare the cook to death—or half way to it. If it's only for a couple of days, it'll help. Here, let's go back and shake him up. Besides, we might as well start something to make a fellow smile. Most morbid packet ever I was in. You'd think it was a crime to laugh on her. Come on."
The galley was a little house by itself on the after [pg 188] deck of the ship. Noyes saw the pump-man call out the cook, and after a time, their voices rising, he heard, "Now, cookie, no more of that slush. Mind you, I'm wasting no time talking to the captain. I'm talking to you. We know that he slips you a little ten-spot every month for keeping down the grub bills; but even if he does, you'll have to dig out something better."
"I'll be giving you what I please."
"You will, will you?" The cook was a good-sized man, and he held a skillet in his hand, but he was taken by surprise. The pump-man whipped the skillet from him, whirled him about, ran him into his galley, and closed and bolted the door behind him. A stove-pipe projected from the roof of the galley. The pump-man climbed up, stuffed a bunch of wet cotton waste into the stovepipe, and with a valve which he seemed to be taking apart, took his stand by the taffrail.
Every few minutes he got up from his valve, put his ear to the door of the shack, and listened. After twenty minutes or so he opened the door, lifted out the cook, and held him over the rail. He was gulping like a catfish.
Noyes looked to see if the captain had witnessed the little comedy. Evidently he had, for Noyes could hear him swearing.
Noyes, now on the bridge, was still chuckling [pg 189] over the picture of the scared cook when the pump-man came walking forward. He was swinging a pair of Stillson wrenches, one in each hand, as if they were Indian clubs, and singing as he came:
"Our ship she was alaborin' in the Gulf o' Mexico,
The skipper on the quarter, with eyes aloft and low.
Says he, 'My bucko boys, it's asurely goin' to blow—
Take every blessed rag from her, strip her from truck to toe,
And we'll see what she can make of it.'
And O, my eyes, it blew! And blew and blew,
And blew and blew! My soul, how it did blow!
Aboard the Flying Walrus in the Gulf o' Mexico.
"The sea—"
Noyes saw him leap to one side, even as he saw a heavy, triple-sheaved block bound on the steel deck beside him. Noyes looked up. Aloft was the boson, apparently rigging up some sort of a hoisting arrangement.
The pump-man stopped to pull out a handkerchief and wipe his forehead. Then he, too, looked up. "Fine business. But did you think for a minute you—that I didn't have my eye on you?"
It took the boson a minute or two to find his tongue. When he did, it was to say, "Young fella, did you ship for a opera singer or wot?"
"I shipped for what you'll find my name signed against in the articles, and I'm on the job every minute. And I'll go on singing if it pleases me. And if it pleases me, I'll finish that song, too."
[pg 190]
"Not on this ship, you won't, 'less you sing it in your sleep and me not in hearin'."
"I'll finish it on this ship, son. And it won't be in my sleep and you'll be within hearing."
A group of deck-hands snickered, and the boson pretended to climb down from the rigging. "You swine! What the—"
They retreated in terror. "It wasn't at you we was laffin', boson."
"Well, see that yer don't, yer cross-eyed whelps—see that yer don't."
"And do you mean to say, you collection of squashes, that you were laughing at me?" The pump-man, still grasping a wrench in each hand, started across the deck after them. "D'y' mean to—"
Down the gangway they retreated in a body. Noyes looked to the captain, but the captain was looking out over the ship's side.
Noyes went down to luncheon, and after luncheon took his cigar and his book to his room. When next he came out, he felt that something had happened since the little adventure of the falling block. The captain was pacing the bridge by fits and starts. The boson was leaning over the quarter-rail. The pump-man was busy on a small job forward.
The quiet was unnatural. Noyes decided to take [pg 191] his constitutional on the long gangway of the main deck. As he paced aft he saw that some of the crew were laying the hatches on one of the tanks. He paced forward. By the time he was aft again they were overhauling a large tarpaulin. He watched them while they stretched it over the hatch covers. He wondered what they were about, for the tanks of an empty oil ship are usually left open in fine weather.
Presently he heard one of the men say to another as they stamped down the tarpaulined hatch, "There—there's as good a prize ring as a man'd want." And then he began to understand.
He stayed aft, while through the smoke of one long cigar he thought it out. When he next went forward he stopped beside the pump-man, who was cutting a thread on a section of deck-piping. "Do you mind my watching how you do that trick?" he asked.
The pump-man looked up. "Surely not," adding after a moment, "though there's nothing much worth watching to it."
Noyes noticed how deftly the tools were handled. Then he said, "So you and the big fellow are going to have it out?"
"Yes, during dinner we agreed to settle it."
"But he's a notorious bruiser—liable to kill you."
[pg 192]
"Maybe, but I don't think so. I've trimmed 'em bigger."
"Not bigger, if they could fight at all?"
"Maybe they couldn't, but"—from beneath the grease and soot of his face his teeth and eyes flashed swiftly upward—"they said they could."
Noyes took another turn of the long gangway. The tarpaulin was now clamped tightly to the hatch-combings, rendering it smooth and firm under foot. Camp-stools for the principals were also there, and two buckets of freshly drawn water in opposite corners.
"Mr. Kieran"—Noyes had halted again beside the pump-man—"what is it the captain's got against you?"
"Why"—he hesitated—"I don't think he's got anything against me exactly." His next words came slowly, thoughtfully. "He may have something against my kind, though."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, you see, a man of the captain's kind can never get a man of my kind to play his game—and he knows it. What he wants around here is a lot of poor slobs who will take the kicks and curses and poor grub, say thank you, sir, and come again."
"But what game does he want you to play?"
"Well, I'm the pump-man. The ship has big bills for valving and piping and repairing. If ever [pg 193] the office got suspicious and called me in on it, why—" he shrugged his shoulders.
Noyes studied the sea for a while. By and by he faced inboard. "Kieran, I've seen ships before, even if I do get sea-sick sometimes. Was that an accident to-day, that block dropping on you—almost?"
"Accident?" The recurring smile flashed anew. "That's the third I've side-stepped in two days. I was in the bottom of a tank yesterday when a little hammer weighing about ten pounds happened to fall in. In the old clipper-ship days, Mr. Noyes, a great trick was to send a man out on the end of a yard in heavy weather and get the man at the wheel to snap him overboard. On steamers, of course, we have no yards, and so little items like spanners and wrenches and three-sheaved blocks fall from aloft. But that's all right." The pump-man, all the while he was talking, kept fitting his dies and cutting his threads. "I've got no kick coming. I came aboard this ship with my eyes open, and I'm keeping 'em open"—he laughed softly—"so I won't be carried ashore with 'em closed."
Noyes took a close look at the pump-man. The trick of light speech, his casual manner in speaking of serious things, was not unbecoming, but this was a more purposeful sort of person than he had [pg 194] reckoned; a more set man physically, a more serious man morally, than he had thought. There was more beef to him, too, than ever he guessed; and the face was less oval, the jaw more heavily hung. The under teeth, biting upward, were well outside the upper.
"But the bosun—he's altogether too huge," mused Noyes. He threw away his cigar. "Kieran, you're too good a man to be manhandled by that brute. You say so, and I'll stop the fight. I've got influence in the office, and I think I could present the matter to the captain so that he will pull the bosun off."
"Thank you, Mr. Noyes, but you mustn't. I'd rather get beat to a pulp than crawl. All I ask is that nobody reaches over and taps me on the back of the skull with a four-pound hammer or some other useful little article while I'm busy with him."
"And when is it coming off?"
"Soon's we go off watch—eight bells."
"Eight bells? Four o'clock." Noyes drew out his watch. "Why, it's nine minutes to that now."
"So near? Then I'd better begin to knock off, if I'm going to wash off and be ready in time, hadn't I?" He finished his thread, gathered up his stock and dies, and strolled off.
Noyes headed for the bridge. The captain's glance, as he came up the ladder, was not at all [pg 195] encouraging; but Noyes was already weary of the captain's hectoring glances.
"Captain, are you going to let it go on?" he asked, and not too deferentially.
"Let what go on?"
"That fight. They're going to have it out in a few minutes. Aft there—look."
"I'm not looking. And I'll take good care I don't—not in that direction. And what I don't see I can't stop, can I? Besides, I hope he beats that pump-man to a jelly."
"Why, what's wrong with him?"
"Wrong? He's dangerous."
"Dangerous?"
"Dangerous, yes. Why, look at the mop of hair and the eyes of him. He's one of those trouble-hunters, that chap. And if troubles don't turn up naturally, he'll go out and dig them up. He's like one of those kind I read about once—used to live a thousand years ago. All he needs is a horse seventeen hands high, and a wash-boiler on his chest, and a tin kettle on his head, and one of those long lances, and he'd go tilting about the country like that Don Quick-sote—"
"Don what?"
"Quick-sote—Quick-sote. That crazy Spaniard who went butting up against windmills in that book of yours you leave around the cabin. A good name [pg 196] for him—Don John Quick-sote—running around buttin' into things he can't straighten out."
"He could do all that and yet be the best kind of a man. And the bosun—why, before I ever heard the name of this ship, I'd heard of her bosun. He's a notorious brute."
"He's the kind of a brute I want to have around. He will do what I order him."
"Did you order him to bring on this fight?"
"And if I did, what of it? Do I have to account to you for what I do on my ship? That pump-man is dangerous, I tell you. Why, just before we sailed, I was telephoning over to the office to find out how he happened to be shipped, and a clerk—"
"The second clerk, was it?"
"What does it matter who it was? He said to watch out for him, too—that he was the kind who knew it all. Wherever the office got him I don't know. And if you know anybody in the office with a pull, you ought to put it up to them, Mr. Noyes, when you go back. This pump-man, he's the kind recognizes no authority."
"Why, I thought he was very respectful toward your officers. And he seems to do his work on the jump, too, captain."
"He carries out orders, yes; but if he felt like it, he'd tell me to go to hell as quick as he'd tell the bosun. I can see it in his eye."
[pg 197]
"Don't you think he only wants to be treated with respect?"
"Treated with respect! Who do you think you're talkin' to—the cook? I don't have to treat one of my crew with respect. I'm captain of my own ship, do you hear?—captain of this ship, and I'll treat the crew as I damn please."
"I guess you will, too; but don't swear at me, captain. I'm not one of your crew."
Noyes descended to the chart-room deck. "I wish," he breathed, "that that pump-man had never seen this ship. They'll kill him before the day's over."