“Just let the Cap’n lay a finger on my Dingley,” warned a bystander, black as thunder.
“That’s what he’s figurin’ on,” Gedge assured the irate one. “And after the machinery”—people crowded aghast to hear—“if we ain’t light enough by then, why, overboard with every darn thing we got!”
“If he tries throwin’ out our stuff he’ll have a riot on his hands—that’s all!”
Things began to look black for the captain.
But if he were aware of the fact, it had no effect on his policy. Hardly ten minutes later Gedge was obliged to interrupt the indignation meeting by calling out to a couple of blue China boys, struggling to get some of the lighter baggage out of the hold: “Hi, you! Stop that, you pig-tailed heathen. That’s mine. Drop it, I say, or I’ll knock the stuffin’ out o’ you!”
The agitated Celestials would have abandoned their task, but for O’Gorman’s: “Say! They’re only getting your stuff up into a safe place so they can reach the coal-bunkers. Here, put the gentleman’s box over by mine.”
In a couple of hours the deck was piled high with miscellaneous baggage, and a derrick, hurriedly rigged, was hauling up the heavier things out of the bowels of the ship. As they came swinging out of the darkness into the chill gray light, people recognized their belongings with an anxiety hardly allayed by the temporary stowage of their all upon the deck—too palpably a possible half-way station to the bottom of the sea.
Gedge’s following was now so great as to be unwieldy. They blocked the narrow gangway, they settled like flies on the freight. He drew off a chosen few, and retired out of the bitter wind to the shelter of the smoke-stack to hold a private session.
“If that fellow had some education,” said Governor Reinhart, “he’d be helping to guide the ship of state at Washington.”