Like unto a river in an arid land, like unto a river that dwindles instead of increases, was the "Push" that headed for the Glory. Smoke came, black and oily, into the electric-lighted night from her smoke-stack; the cattle were all on board, but the tugs were not yet alongside. The absence of the tugs sent many of the men back again. Still, there was a sprinkling aboard.
Scholar found his way to the cattlemen's quarters, a large safe of a place under the ringing iron poop, with bunks all round the walls and all over the floor space, the latter ones fixed between iron stanchions that ran from floor to ceiling. The place smelt already of fresh cattle and of beer. Coming down the companionway to it, it seemed that the few who were there were rather dropping an ordinary word into strings of swear-words, than dropping a swear-word into their speech. Men lay here and there, men sat here and there on bunks. Some he recognized as having been at the signing-on; some faces were new to him. Somebody asked him with many oaths who he was, what he wanted; somebody else informed that inquirer that he must be drunk not to recognize the man. One man deplored that the money was all gone, and there could be no more drink; another voice announced that that didn't matter, and need not be brooded over, being beyond mending. Scholar, looking round, noted that on various of the unoccupied bunks there lay some trivial article of apparel—on one a sock, on another a cap, and on another one half of a pair of braces! Somebody fell down the stairs and yelled, and a voice said: "Take that, then!" Men rose upon their elbows and blinked; some rolled to their feet, rolled to the door. There were sounds of wild scrimmage up and down the stairs. Scholar noticed that many men seemed to take all this for granted; even men whom it would be more fair to call "oiled" than drunk merely gave ear and reclined again. The sounds of fighting waxed and waned, ceased, dwindled out, abruptly began again, above—on the stairs. Now and then the combat surged into the cabin, or a fringe of it, other men coming down the stairs evidently taking sides in the original fight. One of them reeled in, holding his head, sat down on a bunk, looked at his knuckles, shook his hand, and blood dropped from it. He had evidently given a blow, and had evidently received one, for his eye rapidly disappeared as the flesh around it puffed.
Scholar felt a sense of relief when the great bulk of Mike appeared in the shadows outside; yet when Mike fairly entered, and was fully revealed in the hard glare of electric light that lit the place, he knew not whether to be relieved or otherwise. Mike seemed to have grown another inch, to have swelled, broadened, two or three; his eyes seemed at once bleared and brightly dancing.
"Hallo, Scholar!" he hailed. "Have you claimed your bunk?"
Scholar did not understand.
"Put something on your bunk," said Mike. "Something that 'tain't worth nobody's while to steal."
"'Ere yer are—reserved seats!" shouted Cockney, who had been asleep, and now awoke.
Mike looked at a top bunk near the door and climbed on to it. Scholar sat down on a lower one in the middle of the deck. Men came and went. Several ugly pickpocket-faced youths clattered into the cabin, wandered round looking at the bunks and the sleepers.
"I'm sorry I signed on!" grumbled one. "Didn't know it was quarters like this."
He strolled round the cabin and went out. Mike sat up.