"That's it."
"How much is a hund'ed niggers, suh?"
"Two thousand dollars."
"Cap'n, you gits 'em tomorr'. Us kin rule dat many single handed—me 'suadin' an' Lily rammin'. Mebbe two hund'ed. Come on heah, goat! Le's go!"
The Wildcat left the pier with visions of a military formation of a million men, marching steadily toward a place where they were worth twenty dollars apiece to him. In his dream of being king of all labour agents he failed to include the difficulties with which his pathway was beset. The stevedores' strike, gaining strength each day, now included a floating committee whose duty it was to discourage the enlistment of new labour.
The Wildcat borrowed a dollar and ate supper at the lunch counter where he had met Trombone, hoping that he might again encounter that individual. Ranged about him were ten or fifteen hearty eaters; and to this group, at the termination of his own meal, he addressed his invitation to participate in the business of loading steamships with outbound freight. "Ten dollahs a day, boy, comf'table place fo' sleepin', an' all de grub you kin eat."
His oration fell on barren ground. He left the lunch counter without having gained a single recruit. "C'm on heah, Lily. Dese city niggers sho' is triflin'. Whut us needs is fiel' han's, o' else some heavy 'suader like a hoe handle. Us aims to sleep some now. Mebbe tomorr' Lady Luck boons me wid men whut craves a job wid rations an' ten dollahs a day."
For a while the next morning the work of loading the West King with flour lagged a little under the direction of the new foreman. At eleven o'clock, noting the epidemic of reluctance to move out of a slow drag which had afflicted his gang, the Wildcat climbed to the top of a tier of flour barrels. He took out his knife and whittled through the hoops of a barrel. He resumed his place on the pier. "Break down dat top line. Git movin'! Haul out 'at bottom bar'l! Stan' back when dey comes!"
They came. An avalanche of rolling barrels rolled wildly across the deck of the pier. The top one on which the hoops were cut landed with a smash in the centre of an explosive spray of flour. The atmosphere was suddenly white dust.... Black complexions presently became grey.
Perspiring freight jugglers began to laugh at their fellows. In three minutes the roof of the pier was echoing back the volleys of high-pitched laughter which lifted from below. Until noon, and then through the long afternoon, all that the Wildcat's men did was to laugh their heads off at the slightest provocation and move more freight than the ship's cargo booms could handle.