IT proved to be a small fire in the excursion boat’s stores, and the Hudson doused it with a single line of hose. But there was much smoke and more confusion in the bow of the steamboat; and when the Hudson drew off and left the crew of the Leo to swab down the wet decks, “Shine” was hidden in the forepeak of the steamer—behind a pile of cut rails that were used to ballast the nose of the boat—listening to the noises overhead like a boy playing truant.
No one knew he was there, except his friend Doherty, the ex-fireman, whom he had found on the lower deck of the Leo. “’S all right, Shorty,” “Shine” whispered. “I been knocked out by the smudge, see? I fell down the hatch here, an’ was bumped stiff. Make yerself scarce now, an’ let one o’ those deckers fin’ me. Ill raise a holler in a minute.”
Doherty retreated unobserved. When all was quiet again on the Leo, the men in the forecastle heard an agonized moaning on the other side of the forward bulkhead, and came to “Shine’s” aid with oaths of amazement. They raised him up the ladder and supported him, limping weakly, aft to the bar. He said in a voice that shook pathetically, “Have a gargle, boys, on me.” And he said it with such an effect of unselfish thoughtfulness in pain that it won them all.
When Doherty returned forward, he found “Shine” the centre of a ring of admiring deckers who were “gargling” around him in all sympathy. One of them was rubbing his crippled side; another supported him by the arm. He was wincing heroically. “Come in, Shorty,” he gasped. “What’ll yuh have?... That’s all to the good, now, boys. I’m all right. Gi’ me a beer.” He leaned up against the bar and smiled engagingly. “This’s on me. Say, I pull out sixty-six plunks a month, an’ no more chance to spend it ’an a savin’s bank. What d’ yuh think o’ that? Give a man the hottest job in Little ol’ Ne’ York, an’ want to keep him on the dry! What’s yours?”
They received his delicate witticisms with appreciative guffaws, and he beamed with the cordiality of his invitations to drink. He was flushed with the pride of the native who has returned to his old haunts, rich with the loot of the alien. “This ’s on me,” he kept repeating. “What’ll yuh have?”
Soda fizzed, beer frothed, whiskey clucked in the neck of the bottle. The brown hands went over the bar in an eager scramble, and the fat barkeeper juggled with glasses, bottles, siphons and boxes of cigars like a stage magician. “Sure.... On the spring line.... Th’ ol’ Cyrus.... Have a cigar, then.... This ’s on me.”
Doherty, in the background, listened sourly to the laughter of the deckmen, until he saw the size of the roll of greenbacks which “Shine” drew from his trousers’ pocket. Then he took a last hasty gulp of liquor and stood looking fixedly at the bottom of his empty glass. He put it down on the bar and elbowed his way to “Shine.”
“Naw. I’ve had enough.” He touched “Shine’s” elbow significantly and slid his eyes around in a sidewise stealthiness without moving his head. “Nittsy!” he said, out of the corner of his mouth.
“Shine” finished his glass, shook hands with the circle, and followed his friend to the gangway. “What’s up?”