"Kloshe," said the crowd, "kloshe, good old Jack!"
The "shipman" dropped his load into willing claws and claimed first drink loudly.
"S'elp me, you see, pardners, I bro't 'em in fair and square: never broached 'em. I know chaps as'd ha' squatted under the lee of a pile o' lumber and ha' soaked the lot. S'elp me I do!"
It was felt on all hands that he was a noble character. Indian Annie patted him on the back.
"'Ands off, you catamaran," said Jack. In spite of being a seaman he believed the word was a term of abuse.
He was a seaman, though—and a first-class hand anywhere and anywhen. To see him now, foul, half-cocked, bleary, and to see him when three weeks of salt water had cleaned and sweetened him, would surprise the most hopeful. He went passages, not voyages, and skipped ashore every time he touched land. There wasn't a country in the round world he didn't know.
"I know 'em all from Chile to China, from Rangoon to Hell," said Jack, "I know 'em in the dark, by the stink of 'em!"
Now he jawed about this and that, with scraps of unholy information in his talk. No one paid attention, they talked or sucked at the whisky. The more Indian blood the more silence till the blood is diluted with alcohol. Every now and again some of them squealed with poisonous happiness; outside one might hear the sound of the screams and singing and the unholy jamboree. The noise brought others. Someone knocked at the door. The revellers were happy and pleased to see the world and they yelled a welcome.
"Come in, tilikum!" they cried, and Chihuahua opened the door against one klootchman's silent body and showed his dark head and glittering eyes inside.
"Where my klootchman? You see my klootchman? Ah, I see!"