“See this rope? Gonna croak if you don’t get Ole Man get me money, see?” and he burst out crying again. He tied the piece of rope into a hangman’s noose, nine slip knots on a loop, just as he had once taught me to tie it months before. He held the noose up to my face and said once more:
“I’ll croak if you don’t.”
Of course I didn’t believe him, so I just answered:
“All right, John Henry, you’ll feel better when you do!”
Instead of quieting, that seemed to set him off again. He slipped the noose over his head and thrust his face right up against mine.
“Do I get the money?” he half shrieked in his cracked whiskey voice.
Scenes with drunken sailors were no novelty to me. They always made dire threats against themselves, or the captain or their mates, and then they stumbled to bed and forgot it. Now I lost patience.
“You don’t get a damned cent,” I yelled back at John Henry.
It seemed almost to sober him. He straightened.
“You’ll be sorry,” he said, and turning with great dignity he marched out of sight forward with the hangman’s noose around his neck and the rope trailing on the deck after him.