He was a tall, silent man, middle-aged.
The third passenger messed with the crew. He was a small Liverpool dock rat. He claimed that he had not killed his wife, but had only beaten her. The captain, after discreetly calling up a hospital, found that this was true. Because he had but twenty pounds they had taken him for that. He never came up on the boat deck; he viewed the ocean with ignorant terror and kept behind the high steel bulwarks of the well deck, when he came out for air.
The chief, having a romantic mind, decided that the Liverpool man’s wife would probably take a turn for the worse and die. He held that the other passenger, Quayle, was a Bolshevik.
The chief and Drake sat there and yarned through the long sea morning.
“A rum ship,” Drake hazarded.
“We are that,” the chief grinned, “at home to rum company.”
“True, but you know each other; we don’t, we passengers.”
“Five new faces in the ship’s company,” the chief laughed. “Ye see, we can’t keep ’em. We ship so many passengers that it has made their pile easy, or on the way to make it easy. It corrupts the lads. Five new faces—five old ’uns gone to do likewise—on the trail o’ easy money. Man, dear, ’tis restless labor is getting to be—”
“Eight of us, new chums, not knowing each other—for five and three is eight.”
Drake stared out to sea.