The crew sober was very different indeed from the crew drunk. Their likes and their dislikes were more explicable now. There were one or two who spoke to nobody and were left alone, such as the Man with the Hat. He had made a nest of hay for himself on the upper deck; nobody knew, nobody cared, what he did when it rained; nobody was curious enough to go along to see how he weathered it when they passed through lashing rain. He had one manner for all men—one attitude—the attitude of a bulkhead. A friendly approach was met by him exactly in the same fashion as an inquisitive approach. As for openly antagonistic approach—none made it. He did not seem to want to know anything about the cattlemen. Even when at work with his half of the gang he was never known to say a word, except once when a man pushed him, and he whirled round upon him and said, low and vindictive, the one word "Quit!" And the man quit. The night-watchman halted beside him once and said "Good evening," but received no reply. He did not take the snub, stood beside the nest of the Man with the Hat, looking up at the voluminous and oily-looking smoke that rushed away from the top of the smoke stack and stretched out like a fallen pillar, diminishing across the sea.
"Well," said the night-watchman, still looking overhead, "it looks as if we might have a dirty night."
Still there was no reply, and the night-watchman, thrusting his hands deep in his coat pockets, fumbling for pipe and matches, looked round at the Man with the Hat, and peered at him from under his cream-coloured eyebrows—then moved on with a little more haste than he usually exhibited, recovered a few paces away, and made pretence that he had only moved off to light his pipe in the lee of one of the sheep-pens. He bent down there in the attitude of a boy at leapfrog, and as he lit his pipe, expending many matches, could only think to himself: "That is a dangerous young man."
Scholar, who had no distaste for the appearance of the Man with the Hat, marching to and fro on the swinging deck later on, enjoying the pillar of smoke rolling out in the deepening purple night, enjoying the wind, enjoying the sweep of the masts that gave the stars, as they came out, an appearance as of rushing up and down the sky, commented, in passing the Man with the Hat: "Bit of wind." No reply! He thought that the wind carried his words away.
"Bit of wind, I say," he repeated. No reply. He thought the man must be deaf, so passed on and took his stand near the stern that tossed high and slid down, every slide being a forward slide, the screws whirling. He was enjoying the motion and the spindrift on his shoulders—for he was only in undervest and trousers—when up came two men of the lower deck squad, and one said to him: "Rough night." He did not feel inclined to talk with them, but, a little sore from what might have been a snub forward (for the Man with the Hat might not be deaf), he put a certain warmth into his nod and smile in response. The two came closer at that. He wondered why it was that so many of these men could not chat without having the appearance of being ready at any moment to lift a hand and smite their interlocutor. They came close and plied him with questions—one a Welshman, the other from the Kingdom of Fife. Somewhat thus went the conversation:
"Whit deck are you on?"
"The main deck."
"I wondered. I never seen you on the lower deck. Where have you been?"
"What do you mean?" asked Scholar.
"Have you been in Canada?"