"I often wonder what it's like going home. I've never had a father, and I've never had a mother. Straight! Will you be coming back on the ship?"—this suddenly, eagerly.
"I don't know. I think so."
"Tell me all about it when you come back, will yer? I would like to know."
But they were now being warped into the land, through channels between dock walls into docks, round the dock walls, sailors coming running along to hang over rope-fenders. The cattlemen kept quiet. There seemed to be no end to it. Men on shore caught ropes and ran, clattering and yelling. It was as if they were dragging for a corpse. Scholar felt a horror of the land, even as he had felt a horror of putting out to sea in that safe full of madmen, madmen that he felt now he would like to know more of—not probing like the Welshman, or the man from Fife, not even perhaps questioning personally like the Inquisitive One, but just sailing the seas with them after they had got over their cups. Suddenly they found that the ship was still. There was a rope ladder hanging over the other side. A broad-beamed little steamer lay there. The unruly members of the "Push," the shirk-works, were piling over the side and down the rope ladder.
"Come on, Mike!" someone called. "Ashore!"
"They're going to lave us to run the cattle ashore!" said Mike, disgusted, and he swung his legs over. Over they all went, one after the other, down the rope ladder, and jumped thence on to the bluff little steamer, where a man in a jersey stood looking at them curiously, staring; and another, a custom-house man, sat on the further bulwark watching the descent on the grin. The Man with the Hat came down, his wrist through the handles of his valise.
"Carry your bag?" jeered the younger men among the cattlemen below. "Carry your bag, mister?"
But cause for greater amusement was beheld higher up. There was Four Eyes, wrestling with a small trunk, round which he had made a rope fast, trying to lower it over the side. They whooped and cheered, they rocked with delight. "Lower away there!" they shouted. "All clear below! Drop it in the dock!" They advised him to make fast to the capstan. As he struggled with the box they suggested that he should "hail them two fellers on the bridge," and ask them to give him a hand—namely the pilot and the skipper. The face of Rafferty appeared over the rail; he gnashed his teeth, he yelped at them.
"It ain't our place to run the cattle ashore," they called back. Others looked a little forward, turning their heads, for a sharp whistle had sounded thence. Candlass, standing on the top of a sheep-pen, raised thumb and forefinger, and beckoned gently with the finger—then, with his head, gave an inclination inboard.
"Come on youse, then," said Mike. "I knew youse was wrong."