"Somebody hold my legs!" he shouted. It was Scholar. The Inquisitive One promptly sat down upon his feet. Mike had taken off his boots, and was saying, one leg swung over the rail: "Here, some of youse—hold my hand, will yez."
"Look up!" came a voice. It was the Man with the Hat. He had made a slip-noose on the end of a rope. It hissed down and up. On shore Smithers was shouting to the people in the tug astern: "Keep that rope taut!" for the rope to which Michael hung was falling slack. "He'll be down on the screws!" But the noose was now round Michael's waist, and in their rejoicing the "Push" laid hold of the hither end of the rope that the Man with the Hat tossed amongst them, and with a "Yo-ho!" they put as much muscle into hauling the human being aboard as if he had been a stern anchor.
"Easy, easy—for God's sake!" came a quiet voice to rear, a voice that compelled attention because of the very loudness of the others. It was Candlass; and behind him was the captain's steward, who was a good deal more than a first aid man. They secured Michael as he was dragged over the rail, and walked him forward along the narrow passage left between the sheep-pens that crowded the upper deck.
"Bring that other man here," ordered Candlass over his shoulder.
"I'm all right!" said Cockney, standing up. He put up his hand to feel his head, and laid a finger into the impression of the taffrail. Everybody seemed a little more sober after that. The docks receded. Montreal rose up behind them. Sea gulls that had come into port with other ships cried one to another overhead, and came to their poising station above the stern of the S.S. Glory.
CHAPTER VI
Scholar need not indeed have worried, telling himself that he it was who started the pandemonium. Those who had accompanied him were but a few, and sooner or later they would surely have marked the absence of the others and gone ashore to share their pleasures. In the whole "Push" upon the Glory, as she churned slowly down the river, there was hardly a sober man. And virulent, not ecstatic, are the nepenthes offered, to the men who go down to the sea in ships, along the waterfront by the people ashore. Some were still in fighting key; many were in a condition that recalled to whosoever drew near them the adage to let sleeping dogs lie; many were in a kind of mad misery. Perhaps a third showed wounds, as of battle, cuts and bruises. The veering wind about the poop carried mostly swear-words, and these more obscene than blasphemous, to the captain and the pilot on the bridge. The pilot paid no heed; the captain only looked now and then over his shoulder, like one thinking: "Yes, just as usual!" instead of: "That's rather bad." He was held aloft upon the bridge as are spectators in the zoological gardens above the bear pits.
The Man with the Hat, sober and solitary, reclined on a bale of hay to leeward of the smokestack on the upper deck—the sheep deck; its whole length was crowded with sheep in pens, only narrow passage-ways being left between the packed central pens and the narrow pens along the side—these latter being protected from overmuch wind by canvas dodgers. Jack—he who spoke French—and Jack's partner sat laughing and talking alone, telling tales of adventurous lives one to the other, the glitter of those who look upon the wine while it is red still in their eyes, and as they sat nursing their knees, and colloguing, the wind plucked the frayed edges of their pants. Jack pulled his hat down upon his head with a gesture in keeping with that manner of his as of a dandy in his sphere. It is not to be imagined that he had "come down." Men do come down, of course. He was just a hard case, not beyond helping himself to shoes from a shoe-shop door, not beyond looking upon a derelict suburbanite, crossing vacant lots to his home, with unsteady steps, late at night, as a fair prey, if Johnnie was with him. In his walk of life such a way of replenishing the exchequer was considered no more inestimable that in another walk of life is a little sharp practice in business. There they sat, laughing and chatting.
Pierre had drawn apart, elbows on the rail, his shoulders suggesting that he would fain have them hide him from his fellows. He looked at the shores spreading out, onward and onward, as the Glory threshed along and the tugs left her—a shore that Nature, and the inhabitants, make to look much like certain parts of the real and original France. There were the poplar rows, the little belfrys, the little French villages. If his knowledge of English prevented him from understanding all the obscene oaths behind him, so much the better for him and his dream of the Picardy home.