I jumped into my clothes and went into the fire-room. Hardly able to keep their feet, the firemen toiled away, scattering shovels-full of coal evenly over the fires, wielding their slice bars ... greeting with oaths and comic curses the awkward coal passer who spilled with his laden wheelbarrow into the slightly lower pit where they stood.
I quit the James Eads Howe at Ashtabula, after several round trips in her, the length of the Lakes.
I freighted it to Chicago, where I shipped, again as porter, on a package freighter.
The captain of the package freighter Overland should have been anything but a captain. He was a tall, flabby, dough-faced man, as timid as a child just out of the nursery.
We had taken on, as one of our firemen, a Canuck, who, from the first, boasted that he was a "bad man"....
He intimidated the cook right off. He punched in a glass partition to emphasise a filthy remark he had made to the head engineer. He went after me, to bully and domineer me, next.
It looked as if we were in for a hard voyage to the Georgian Bay.
The Canuck, at the very first meal, terrorised the crew that sat down with him. I looked him over carefully, and realised that something must be done.
He flung a filthy and gratuitous expression my way. Silently I stepped back from the mess room, untied my apron, and meant to go in and try to face him down. But at that juncture, my courage failed me, and instead of inviting the rough-neck out on deck, as I had tried to force myself to do, I hurried to the captain's cabin.