XXIX—THE TELLTALE RIBS
THERE was nothing especially interesting about that prolonged grunt of the old Zizania down the California coast. She rolled and thrashed, and the brisk trades spattered spray over her bows, and she certainly took her own time in moving along.
We all settled down to endure the trip as best we could, but it was a rather surly party. Forward, the blacks and whites nursed their scars and their grudge; aft, Keedy and I scowled at each other so much that nobody could be happy around where we were. Miss Kama walked the deck alone, or read, or embroidered in her state-room; once in a while I got a glimpse of her through the door while she was at work. She continued to sit beside me at table, but she was very cool and distant. I don’t know as I tried to have her anything else. I would have liked to lean over the rail and talk with her, though I never presumed to speak to her on deck. Take a fellow when he is young, penned aboard a slow packet, a pretty girl near him all the time, and you bet he cannot confine all his thought to the scenery and his job.
She truly was a pretty girl! I can see her now as she strode to and fro on the upper deck, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her white sweater, and drawing it forward so that it set off her plumpness. There was a sort of indescribable tousle to her hair, if I may put it that way. I don’t know what the color was—there’s no name for those shades of copper and brown and all that.
I know I liked mighty well to see the sun shine through that hair.
I loafed below and forward considerably. I found a lot to interest me, particularly a job that the Russian Finn was on in his spare time. He was making a new tail for his monkey. He explained to me half tearfully that the monkey would never be safe or happy otherwise. I had pretty hard work to understand the man’s broken lingo, but I gathered that this especial kind of monkey needed to spend a portion of his time hanging head downward from his tail in order to be well and contented. Once or twice since the tail had been amputated the monkey had run up the foremast or the derrick, and had confidently tried to throw an imaginary tail over a rope, and had tumbled to the deck, where he had squatted and moaned and examined the stump with confused and pitiful attempt to understand the phenomenon. I could sympathize with the Finn’s fears when he said that “some day he fall over the board or break him damn neck.” The cook’s random blow had left some inches of the stump, and to this with marline and glue the Finn deftly fastened by an “end-seizing” a wire covered with furred skin. I wondered where he secured this skin. He owned up to me. He had captured and killed one of the cook’s pet cats, and the cook had never opened his eyes wide enough to detect the crime, or to behold where the skin of the defunct was performing vicarious atonement.
This catskin-covered wire was hooked at the end. Edison, I reckon, never watched the testing of an invention with greater raptness than the Finn displayed as the monkey, after a thorough inspection of the new appendage, clambered aloft to where a rope swayed invitingly. I confess that I shared in that interest. It proved a surprising success. The monkey swung from the hook, chattered, and grinned, and came down and sat for long minutes scrutinizing the thing, running busy little fingers along the furred wire.
“I may need an inventor with brains when I get at my job down below here,” I told the Finn. “I will remember what you have done to your monkey.”
But when the time did come, it was the monkey instead of the master who served.