At the entrance to the pier I met a powerful, chunky lad who was called "Nippers," he said. He, too, was going with the South Sea King ... not as a cattleman, but as stowaway. He urged me to stow away along with him. And he gave me, unimaginatively, my name of "Skinny," which the rest called me during the voyage.
We strolled up to the men and joined them.
"Hello, kids!"
"Hello, fellows! Are you the cattlemen for the South Sea King?"
"Right you are, my lad ... we are that!"
The men went on with their arguing. They were fighting the Boer War all over again with their mouths. Some of them had been in it. Many of them had tramped in South Africa. They shouted violently, profanely, at each other at the tops of their voices, contending with loud assertions and counter-assertions, as if about to engage in an all-round fight.
Several personal altercations sprang up, the points of the debate forgotten ... I couldn't discover what it was about, myself ... only that one man was a fool ... another, a silly ass ... another, a bloody liar!
The launch which was to carry them to the South Sea King at this moment started nosing into the dock, on a turbulent zig-zag across the harbour; and the men forgot their quarrelling. It brought up at the foot of a pile and made fast.