William T. could never leave there with that dollar in his pocket. He made a great fellow of himself by buying drinks for a bunch of bums, and then I warped him in and grappled him to me. Passing the Bayport Hotel this time, I could see Judkins and Davies still talking, only by this time some of the crew were giving out interviews, too, and the audience included two or three reporters, and all hands had moved from the lobby to the barroom.
After a peek at that cheerful party and then at the dark harbor I didn't blame William T. for wanting to go in and join them, but he had signed to go a cruise on the Happy Day. I reasoned with him till he told me for the third time that he was William T. Coots, a tough guy, and was going to have one more drink. Then I dropped fair words, walloped him back on to the sidewalk, ran him down aboard the Happy Day, and introduced him to Scoot.
We put out. The Happy Day was an ancient craft that had been built right there in Bayport, and if she'd ever been outside the harbor before, the oldest inhabitant couldn't recall it. How she was going to act outside this night none of us would bet, but we hoped she'd surprise us.
But she acted pretty much like we figured she would. She had a 65-foot hammer hoist. We couldn't see ten feet away—it was a dark, drizzly night—but we could feel the runways of that hoist waving somewhere up in the clouds above us. And no harm in that, if it didn't come down on our heads; and no harm when she wouldn't lift from a sea—she wasn't built to—but if only she'd let one pass! But not a blessed one. She'd slue around sideways, and the next one would hit her a swipe, and aboard they'd come as if all the welcome in the world was waiting them.
The Happy Day rated a deck-house amidships, with a galley and a little L that Scoot had built on, with a bunk to sleep in of nights. A sea coming aboard one side took the house along with it over the other side. "O' course," said Wheezer, "it was nachally to be espected, but if she'd waited till next week I was reckonin' to had her painted red with blue trimmin's, an' sell her along o' the rest o' the lighter."
When the house threatened to loosen up first, Scoot came up out of the hold to rescue Confucius from his bunk, with a brier pipe he'd bought years before this for a half-crown in Liverpool and a pair of custom-made pants he used to wear to parties.
A couple of tons of water in the shape of a small sea chased Scoot back down the ladder. A spry one, Scoot. He got out of the way, holding Confucius and the pants high in the air. The back of William T's neck happened to be about the middle of the region where most of that sea landed below. After he'd coughed up what he could from his insides, William T. had a word to say. Scoot had rigged up a bilge-pump which worked from the hold. William T. was told to work that as well as shovel the coal. What he wanted to say was that he'd shovel the coal or he'd stand by the pump, but not both. "What did I ship for—what for?" he demanded of Scoot.
Scoot was a little man, and he used to rig up a pair of big black horn-rimmed spectacles he owned and talk with care before strangers, but he wasn't so safe as he looked. His father, a delicatessen man, had intended him for a chemist, and then died in time to save him from it. Scoot had other notions, and only he met a Barbados negro with a head made of the same mixture as two parts in five Portland cement after it'd had two days to set—only for him Scoot said he might have been a light-weight champion riding around in his own auto. After that fight he said he'd never raise his hand to a man again. No, sir; it would be a meat-axe for him—also he was going to draw the color line. And the higher life for him thereafter.
"Only in toilsome essays to climb the heights
Does man from his baser nature rise,"
Scoot used to say. And he did essay to climb, but every once in so often his foot would slip and down he'd come and begin to claw around like anybody else.