The story of this cattleboat unfolds freshly before me again, out of the records of memory ... the pitiful suffering of the cattle ... the lives and daily doings of the rowdy, likeable men, who were really still undeveloped children, and would so go down to the grave ... with their boasting and continual vanity of small and trivial things of life.
All the time I was keeping a diary of my adventures ... in a large, brown copybook, with flexible covers. I carried it, tightened away, usually, in the lining of my coat, but occasionally I left it under the mattress of my bunk.
Nippers observed me writing in it one day.
That night it was gone. I surmised who had taken it.
Seeking Nippers, I came upon him haltingly reading my diary aloud to an amused circle of cattlemen, in his quarters aft.
"Give me that book back!" I demanded.
He ignored me.
"Give him a rap in the kisser, Skinny!"
I drew back, aiming a blow at Nippers. He flung the book down and was on me like the tornado we had just run through ... he was a natural-born fighter ... in a twinkling I was on the floor, with a black eye, a bleeding mouth.