“There’s one thing about it—you’ll work harder if you have a lay,” said Keedy.
That’s usually the way with the grafter or loafer—he’s afraid the other fellow won’t work hard enough.
Frankly, I did not have any very brilliant hopes in regard to that expedition, for if old Ingot Ike had told the truth about the failure of the underwriters, I figured that the diving proposition must be a tough one. Keedy was hot about it, for he did not know enough about such work to judge chances; as for Captain Holstrom, ever since he had won this Zizania elephant he was in a state of mind which made him ready for any project, even to putting wings on her and starting for the moon.
I didn’t pay much attention to the outfitting, except to make a list of such equipment in the way of lines, hose, air-pumps, and such matters as I needed for my part of the work. Keedy and Holstrom turned around and borrowed money on the security of the steamer, this debt to stand against our partnership. Keedy seemed so sure of that gold that he did not stop to ask me how I was fixed to stand my share in case of utter failure. Therefore, with plenty of funds to work with, we were ready for sea in short order, and to sea we went, swashing out past Point Lobos, the sea-lions hooting at us as we passed their rocks, and started down the coast.
I leaned over the rail and watched the shore melt in the hazy distance, and did not blame the sea-lions for their derogatory remarks. I did not know much about steamers, but I realized that the Zizania, condemned Government tub, wasn’t anything to brag about. She was a real old ocean-walloper, a broad-beamed duck of a thing, thrashing her warped paddles, her rusty walking-beam groaning, her patched boilers wheezing—a weather-worn, gray, and grunting ocean tramp.
Like all craft of the buoy-boat model, she had much deck room forward of the bridge, and here were nested, as dories are nested on a Gloucester trawler, four forty-foot lighters. Plenty of anchors accompanied these scows—huge, rusty second-hand anchors which Captain Holstrom had bought from junkmen. The Zizania was naturally slow, and this load forward now made a snail of her. Hawsers and chains encumbered her deck space everywhere—age-blackened ropes, and iron from which rust scales were dropping. Captain Holstrom had ransacked the wharfs for hand-me-downs. Even the men whom he had shipped looked as though he had secured them at a rummage sale.
“It’s a checker-board crew,” the captain had informed me as they straggled on board. “Half black men, and half white. That’s the only way to sort men when you’re bound on a long cruise. Keep the blacks mad with the whites, and vitchy vici, and you’ve always got half the crew on your side in case of trouble. There can’t any general mutinies start when you’ve got a checker-board crew. Number-one Jones has the white men’s watch; Number-two Jones has the black watch; and as soon as we get this stuff stored and the rest moused on deck I’ll have Number-one sick his bunch on to Number-two’s, and let ’em fight long enough to get good and mad. Then they’ll sort of neutralize each other for the rest of the cruise.”
That system of gentle diplomacy was new to me, and I loafed around and kept an eye out, for I have always had a hearty relish for an honest scrap. Furthermore, in explaining to me later, the captain had stated that I was expected to jump in with himself and the mates and break up the fight with clubs when it had progressed far enough.
“You see, we want to leave both sides mad and neither side licked,” said Captain Holstrom. “It will be like cooking in a hot oven. The thing mustn’t get scorched on. I know how to handle it. Jump in when I say the word.”
He had given me these instructions leaning over the sill of the pilot-house window soon after we had got away from the dock.