For one thing, as I've hinted before, he was a bit of a panty-waist. It wasn't so much the squeaky voice or the effeminate gestures he cut loose with from time to time. One of the roughest, toughest scoundrels who ever cut a throat on Venus was "High G" Gordon, who talked like a boy soprano, and the meanest pirate who ever highjacked a freighter was "Runt" Hake—who wore diamond ear-rings and gold fingernail polish!
But it was Slops' general attitude that isolated him from the command and crew. In addition to being a most awful prude, he was a kill-joy. When just for a lark we begged him to boil us a pot of spaghetti, so we could pour a cold worm's nest into Rick Bramble's bed, he shuddered and refused.
"Certainly not!" he piped indignantly. "You must be out of your minds! I never heard of such a disgusting trick! Of course, I won't be a party to it. Worms—Ugh!"
"Yeah!" snorted Johnny Wainwright disdainfully, "And ugh! to you, too. Come on, Joe, let's get out of here before we give Slops bad dreams and goose-flesh!"
Nor was hypersensitiveness Slops' worst failing. If he was squeamish about off-color jokes and such stuff, he had no compunctions whatsoever against sticking his nose in where it didn't belong.
He was an inveterate prowler. He snooped everywhere and anywhere from ballast-bins to bunk-rooms. He quizzed the Chief about engine-room practices, the gunner's mate on problems of ballistics, even the cabin-boy on matters of supplies and distribution of same. He was not only an asker; he was a teller, as well. More than once during the next nine days he forced on the skipper the same gratuitous advice which before had enraged the Old Man. By sheer perseverance he earned the title I had tagged him with: "Captain Slops."
I was willing to give him another title, too—Captain Chaos. God knows he created enough of it!
"It's a mistake to broach the blockade at Vesta," he argued over and over again.
"O.Q., Slops," the skipper would nod agreeably, with his mouth full of some temper-softening tidbit, "you're right and I'm wrong, as you usually are. But I'm in command of the Leo, and you ain't. Now, run along like a good lad and bring me some more of this salad."
So ten days passed, and it was on the morning of the eleventh day out of Sand City that we ran into trouble with a capital trub. I remember that morning well, because I was in the mess-hall having breakfast with Cap O'Hara, and Slops was playing another variation on the old familiar theme.