"'If me eyes don't deceive me, I see Jamey Dugan. Dead or alive, I shake hands with you.'
"Whether Dugan knew the greasy beachcomber or not, I knew that the bunko steering talk would get him. It was very flowery.
"'Why, certainly, you remember me. In Valparaiso. You were in the good old ship so-and-so.'
"I could see that there was no time to lose if I expected to reach the hall with all of them. I mounted a fire-hydrant near by, and pleaded with them, telling them that this crook who had hold of them was nothing but a hireling of the crimp, and tomorrow, all of their money being spent, they would most likely be shipped off to sea in any old tub whose master offered the most money to the boarding-house keeper.
"My pleading was in vain. They kept edging away as if I were a wild beast of the jungle. The influence of the gangster was getting stronger. Again I beseeched and implored these men of the sea to come with me. They only started to move away. It was with a sickened heart that I stepped down from the hydrant. I had no chance with this barnacle of the sea, for they were already starting in his wake for Ryan's saloon across the street."
The cook, lamenting his loss, started to stir up another lemon-de-luxe. Taking advantage of the opportunity, I stole up on deck to relieve the second mate for dinner. He must have thought that I had foundered on the noodle soup and plum-pudding.
The cook and I may not altogether have agreed on the social things of life, but I was with him heart and soul in his fight for better and cleaner conditions for sailors ashore. I, too, know the crimps, and had suffered more than once from their dastardly methods of making money.
They were always on the lookout for anything that resembled a sailor when a ship was ready to sail, and a short-handed captain would offer one of them fifty or a hundred dollars a head blood-money. With that would go from one to two months' advance in wages to the unfortunate victim, which eventually fell into the crimp's hands also. He would not stop even at murder if necessary to fill the required quota.
What if he did ship a dead man or two? They were not supposed to awake for at least twenty-four hours after they were brought aboard. By that time they were under way, and the curses of the captain were lost in sheeting home the upper topsails.
The mate, on the other hand, took a lively interest in restoring the sleeper to life. After he had spent some time clubbing him, and trying every method known to the hard-boiled mates of former times, he would find a belaying-pin, and beat the drugged man on the soles of his shoes. This was the final test. If he did not respond to it, the officer would report to the captain that one of the crew who had just come aboard was dead. Cursing and swearing, the captain would say: "How do you know that he is dead?"