"If at any time," observed the Second pleasantly, "you would like that cigarette case the barber is selling, you know how to get it."
"Thanks, old man," said the Red Un loftily, with his eye on the wall.
The Second took a step forward and thought better of it.
"Better think about it!"
"I was thinking of something else," said the Red Un, still staring at the wall. The Second followed his eye. The Red Un was gazing intently at the sign which said: "Cable crossing! Do not anchor here!"
As the Second slammed out, the Chief crawled from his manhole and struggled out of his greasy overalls. Except for his face, he was quite tidy. He ran an eye down the port tunnel, where the shaft revolved so swiftly that it seemed to be standing still, to where at the after end came the racing of the screw as it lifted, bearded with scud, out of the water.
"It looks like weather to-night," he observed, with a twinkle, to the Fourth. "There'll aye be air wanted." But the Fourth was gazing at a steam gauge.
III
The Red Un's story, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts—his temptation, his fall and his redemption. All lives are so divided: a step back; a plunge; and then, in desperation and despair, a little climb up God's ladder.
Seven days the liner lay in New York—seven days of early autumn heat, of blistering decks, of drunken and deserting trimmers, of creaking gear and grime of coal-dust. The cabin which held the Red Un and the Purser's boy was breathless. On Sunday the four ship's boys went to Coney Island and lay in the surf half the afternoon. The bliss of the water on their thin young legs and scrawny bodies was Heaven. They did not swim; they lay inert, letting the waves move them about, and out of the depths of a deep content making caustic comments about the human form as revealed by the relentless sea.