A big hulking fellow scrambled up the ladder and stood beside them. Donald glanced at him. He had straw-colored hair and a broad, ugly, clean-shaven face. “Vind dot blasted wire on der drum!” he growled at the sweating boys. “Vy der blazes don’t you use your brains! Fetch der end oop here und vind her!” Thompson dragged the end of the wire to an iron drum and wound while Donald “lighted” the hawser along. “Who’s that chap?” asked Donald, when the man had turned away.
“The ruddy Dutchman we have for a second greaser,” replied Thompson with an oath. “Mister Otto Hinkel—a square-head from Hamburg—and a stinkin’ ‘yaw-for-yes’ swine if there ever was one!”
Under the orders of the Nova Scotia mate, the two were kept busy at various tasks, and within an hour of the time he had come aboard, Donald began to be disillusioned. There was very little romance in what he had seen, heard or done so far. Toiling and sweating in the cold, wet and muck on the barque’s decks, with drunken, fighting men falling foul of them, and cursed at by officers—themselves ill tempered and harassed—who seemed to be absolutely heartless and apparently ready to enforce orders with a blow or a kick, Donald began to recall his father’s words, “It’s a dog’s life at the best of times!” The scenes on the wharf disgusted him, and during a “knock off” to gulp a mug of coffee in the half-deck, he witnessed another dock-side altercation between two “ladies” who both appeared to have a claim of some sort on a stolid Swede, who, drunk and hardly able to stand, stood looking stupidly on.
“Ay tell ju,” screamed one of them, “he’s my hosbond dot man is! His wages cooms to me!”
“Ye’re a liar!” shouted the other, who was Scotch. “He merrit me two years ago! Ah hae ma merridge-lines tae prove it, which is a thing you havny got ye dirrty Dutch——” And she applied an epithet which implied that the lady in question had never received the benefit of clergy in lawful ratification. “Ah, ken ye, ya yalla-haired trollop! Ye hae a boat-load o’ husbands! There’s yin in ivery shup that gaes doon the Clyde——” And casting aside their shawls in the approved Broomielaw fashion, both went for one another in a scratching and hair-pulling contest of most disgusting savagery.
The big Highland dock-policeman sauntered up, and with a blasé expression on his ruddy face tried to separate the combatants. They, however, resented interference and attacked him. His helmet rolled off, to be slyly kicked into the dock by one of the onlookers who detested policemen, and the two women gave him a tough tussle. Grabbing the Swedish damsel, he shoved the Scottish maid on her back in the mud, and blew his whistle. Another policeman ran up. “Pit yer cuffs on that Moll lyin’ doon an’ bring the barra’,” said the helmetless one. “We’ll tak them baith to the offis!” The prostrate woman was evidently too drunk to rise, but kicked and struggled fiercely as the policeman snapped the handcuffs on her wrists. Then she lay in the mud with the rain pouring on her naked shoulders, weeping and cursing, while her opponent struggled in the officer’s iron grip. In a few minutes the other policeman appeared with a long, coffin-like hand-cart on two wheels. The lady in the mud was hoisted into it, kicking and screaming, and effectually confined by means of two straps. With one officer pushing the hand-cart, and the other dragging the Scandinavian woman, the procession started up the shed, followed by the “boos” and groans of the spectators.
The man who was the cause of all the row suddenly seemed to wake up. Reaching around the back of his belt, he pulled out a sheath-knife, and shouting, “Ay kill dot feller!” staggered, brandishing the knife, after the policemen. Mr. Nickerson had been calmly watching the fracas from the poop, but when he saw the man moving off, he sprang from the poop rail to the dock, and in two or three long strides, reached the belligerent Swede. In less time than it takes to relate, he had knocked the fellow to the ground, and had twisted the knife out of his hand and sent it spinning along the stone floor of the shed. Then with a mighty heave, he jerked the man to his feet, rushed him up the gang-way, and then hove him from the height of the to’gallant rail to the deck. Leaping after the now thoroughly cowed sailor, the mate booted him into the fore-castle, and then, pensively pulling at his mustache, walked nonchalently aft along the main-deck to the poop, utterly oblivious to the cries of “Bucko!” “Yankee bruiser!” “Come up here an’ try yer fancy tricks an’ we’ll pit a heid on ye!” which came from the coterie on the quayside.
Donald was nauseated by the sights he had witnessed and the manner in which Mr. Nickerson had handled the Swedish sailor frightened him with its brutality. He could hear the heavy thud of the mate’s boots as they were driven into the ribs and back of the man, and it sickened his sensitive soul.
“Ye’re looking white about the gills, kid!” remarked Thompson sarcastically. “What’s worrying ye?”