Perhaps that accounts for the fact that when one of the firemen rushed past us a few minutes later he was using language such as he would not have used had he been properly mindful that there was a lady in hearing.
The fireman came from the depths below-decks, and was chasing the Russian Finn’s monkey. He was so intent on the chase that when the fleeing monkey invaded the sanctity of the upper deck the fireman came along, too. There were several breathless instants in that part of the pursuit which we saw. You will recollect that this monkey had a false end to his mutilated tail—a curved wire, which was covered with cat’s fur. As the monkey fled, screaming and swinging the heavy end of the tail from side to side, the hook caught, first on a stanchion, then on a lifeboat prop. The monkey had not entirely mastered the science of handling that new tail, or else he was too excited just then to remember its limitations. When he had his own pliant tail it didn’t matter if a loop hooked around an obstruction. But now when the wire hooked itself the monkey was obliged to back up and unhook that inflexible loop. Each time he stopped he lost all the lead he had gained on the fireman.
Four times in traversing the upper deck the coal-heaver was near enough to make a crack at the monkey with a grate bar. Each time the monkey unhooked himself just in time to be able to dodge and continue the flight. Finally the fugitive made the ensign mast by a rousing leap, shinned, up, and hung over the dingy gilded ball at the top. I don’t understand monkey talk, but I’m sure that the yells he sent down were just as pure profanity as that which the fireman was howling up at him.
“Hey, there, my man,” I called, “that kind of talk doesn’t belong up here.”
He shut up, gave the monkey a long and blistering stare, and came back toward the ladder. Sweat was running down through the soot on his face, and that face showed that he was in no pleasant frame of mind.
“I asks to be excused,” he said, “but that—” he gulped. “Seeing that I can’t talk about it before a lady and be polite, I asks to be excused again and I’ll be going.”
I followed him to the head of the ladder and stopped him just as he was on the first rounds.
“What happened?”
“We’re keeping up a little steam for the derrick windlass and the pumps, and that gimlet-eyed, snub-nosed hellion got into the bunkers when I was on deck, and turned on my wet-down hose, and shifted twenty tons of dust coal out to where it’s all got to be shoveled back. I’m going down to write out notices for a funeral and, by Jabez! I’ll guarantee to have the corpse ready!”
“Shifted twenty tons of coal!” said I, surprised. “It must have taken him some time.”