"How do you do it?" she asked.
"What?" asked Wyllard, attacking his dinner.
"We'll say persuade other folks to see things as you do."
"You evidently mean the skipper, and I suppose you heard something of what was going on. In this case, as it happens, I'm indebted to his prejudices. He's one of the old type—a seaman first of all—and what we call bluff, and you call bounce, has only one effect upon men of his kind. It gets their backs up."
Agatha fancied that he did not like it, either, but she changed the subject.
"There really was a row forward," she said. "What was the trouble over? You were, no doubt, somewhere near the scene of it."
Wyllard laughed. "I sat upon the steerage ladder, and am afraid I cheered the combatants on. It was really a glorious row. They hammered each other with tin plates, and some of them tried to use hoop-iron knives, which fortunately doubled up. They broke quite a few of the benches, and wrecked the mess table, but so far as I noticed the only one seriously hurt was a little chap who was quietly looking on."
"And you encouraged them?"
"I certainly did. It was a protest against dirt, disorder, and the slothfulness that's a plague to the community. Isn't physical force warranted when there's no other remedy?"
A grey-haired Canadian looked up. "Yes," he said, "I guess it is. The first man who pulled his gun in British Columbia was hanged right away, and they've scarcely had to make an example of another ever since, though it's quite a while ago."