CHAPTER VII
The two bosses looked at their men, observing how some stood erect, if bleary, but how others swayed and propped themselves against taffrail or neighbour.
"I think," said Candlass, "if you have the bigger bunch, Rafferty, that I've the pull on you for the sober ones."
"Oh, indeed," answered Rafferty. "They'll be sober and sorry before we strike Liverpool." Some of the men flinched, and some showed their teeth in wry smiles; one or two, men of the order of Jack, stuck hand in jacket pocket easily, cast their heads back, and smiled secret smiles at the river.
"Those of you that are sober," said Candlass to his gang, "come forward." And he walked away. He was taken at his word; not all followed. Half-way along the deck he turned and glanced meditatively at those who elected to call themselves drunk, and as he glanced at that little party thus it became aware of him, and was troubled, and one or two more disentangled themselves and followed him. There was a slight puckering upward of his under lip as he considered each of these, and to each he delivered a brief nod, and they knew they were marked men. Rafferty had other ways of doing it.
"Drunk and sober," he said, "get forward!" and shepherded them before him, along the passage-way between the sheep-pens on the other side. One man turned and looked at him insolently; and Rafferty, elbowing ahead, plucked his sleeve, and leaning forward, whispered in his ear, then thrust him along the deck violently.
"What did he say to you?" asked another.
"I'll tell you what I said to him," said Rafferty, "and to you," he added as if biting the words. And stepping up close he muttered something with a virulent expression. The men crowded forward, growling.
"What did he say?" they asked.
One of them—he who was the subject of Rafferty's second whispered advice—explained: "He said: 'I'll not give you a chanst to make any reports, if that's in your mind. I'll get ye alone between decks, and you'll be having an accident. Somebody will find ye had a severe fall.'"