"Thank you very much for that," said Scholar. "Only a man must look after himself of course."
"Yus, that's all right. Good luck! You ain't 'ust one of us; you don't know the ropes—not 'ere, any'ow. Good luck, mate."
He and those others who had power over their legs, climbed to the deck, Scholar accompanying them. The former jogglings must have been merely due to the casting loose of one or two hawsers. A ladder still stretched from ship to wharf. "Come on, come on there. Get ashore!" the bo'sun was shouting at its top. "You fellers had no right aboard here anyhow." The visitors hastened over the side and down the ladder, those of them who saw a policeman at the shed end (looking up with that frowning and sidewise consideration that suggests: "Now I don't know but what I should run you fellows in! You look as if there might be a charge about you!") going down with anxious precipitancy. The last reached the wharf. Two men came up, climbed aboard—the pilot and a ship's officer. The ladder was hauled away, the last hawser was cast loose, and with a tug ahead and a tug astern the S.S. Glory moved from the wharf sideways like a great iron wall drifting away from a great stone one. The space of dirty water between, with pieces of straw, bits of wood, and such flotsam of the docks—a sodden apple or two, and a potato—rapidly widened. The lights alongshore looked pale and insignificant as the dawn spread; those in the low-browed windows of the waterfront saloons that could be espied over the leaden-hued roofs had lost their glare. Men below, those who could stand, feeling sure now that she was off, came on deck to double-shuffle and cluster on the poop, to cheer and scream, to wave their hands shorewards, as though they saw a multitude of friends there waving farewell, though really there were none.
Before the cheering was over a little unpleasantness began between Mike and Michael. In all societies, in all walks of life, there are certain statements that are considered insulting; but statements that in one stratum are considered insulting are, in another, looked upon as merely amusing; in yet another they are unheard, unknown, and so there is no opinion on them. What should a passivist, in any walk of life, do when some neighbour of his paddock discharges at him the supreme term of contempt of that special paddock? They who cheered the dock roofs turning grey in the morning, and the early stevedores, and the few late night-birds, had now something close at hand to attract their attention. Michael and Mike, on the poop now, met for the first time since Mike, in the saloon ashore, had preferred the company of his two friends to that of the "Push." And Michael, extremely fuddled, vaguely remembered that he had some grievance against Mike. Mike leant against a rail that ran athwart the ship, dividing the stretch of upper deck from the stubby semi-circle of poop. His hands were behind him, holding the rail as he leant against it. He had had a short sleep since coming aboard, and his drunkenness was stale. The ale within Michael, on the other hand, had not yet come to the height of its action.
"What," he was asking Mike, "are you a-doing wearing a seaman's cap?"
Mike turned his head from surveying the shed roofs, lightly glanced down at Michael, but did not fix him, turned his head the other way.
"A seaman's cap, I say!" Michael repeated.
Mike shook his head, as if a fly had landed on his face.
"Eh?" said Michael.
Mike looked down upon his stubby and sturdy compatriot as a Saint Bernard dog looks down on a snarling Pomeranian between its forepaws.