Well, Newman might dismiss this fellow with a contemptuous word, but I couldn't. Cockney had become a rival I must reckon with. I didn't like the way he lorded it over the stiffs in my watch, even if the stiffs themselves did like it. I didn't like the noise he made in the starboard foc'sle, or the hard case airs he assumed. I was number one bully in my watch, and intended to remain so. I was, in fact, cock of the crew (Newman excepted, of course) and I thought that Cockney's chesty boasting was in a way a defiance of me.
No doubt I was right. As I discovered in time, Cockney had a good reason behind his blatant tongue. It was necessary that he accustom some of the crew, even a few stiffs if no more, to follow his leadership. But he couldn't blow big in his own foc'sle, because Holy Joe wouldn't allow it; and he didn't dare lay a curse or a finger on the little parson because he knew if he did the squareheads would jump him in a body. So he ventured into my bailiwick, hoping, I suppose, that the open support of Boston and Blackie, his size, which matched my own, and his newly got reputation as a bad man with a knife, would bluff me.
It didn't. His dirty and violent talk sickened and wearied me, and just as soon as I had a reasonable pretext I ordered him out of the foc'sle. This wasn't as high-handed as it sounds, for Cockney had the gall one afternoon to leave the deck during his watch out, and break into my watch's rest with his obscene gabble.
He was disposed to dispute my order, and the stiffs backed him up with talk. So I turned out and turned to. I slapped a few stiffs, and threw Cockney through the door. He invited me out on deck, and of course I accepted. We had a nice set-to before all hands. Even the tradesmen came forward to see the sport.
Well, Newman's estimate of the man was correct. Cockney was scum, yellow scum. His fighting methods were as foul as his tongue; he tried all of his slum tricks, the knee, the eye-gouge, the Liverpool-butt, and when he found I was up to them, and the stronger man in the clinches, he wanted to call enough. But I was too incensed by this time to let him escape easily, and I battered him all about the foredeck. Finally he turned tail and fled aft. Of course I did not pursue beyond the deck-house. His fleeing the battle really pleased me more than knocking him out. I felt sure that such an ignominious defeat would cook his goose with the stiffs.
It did. Boston and Blackie stopped grooming Cockney for mob leader; they had seen that he lacked guts in a pinch, and that finished him with them. The other stiffs still welcomed and admired him (for, although he was a good sailor, he was one of them at heart, and, after all, hadn't he tried to stick the mate?), but he was no longer their hero. Aye, it was quite a fall for Cockney; he lost a lot of face when he ran away from my fists. He kept out of my foc'sle thereafter.
I mentioned that this fight started because Cockney came into our foc'sle during his watch on deck. Now, that illustrates the surprising slackness of discipline in the port watch. Just a few days before the mate was ready to shoot Holy Joe for going below during his watch on deck, but he never bothered his head about Cockney's much worse offense. In fact, during these strange days he seemed not to bother his head about anything his men did. He promenaded on the poop during his watches on deck, alone, or arm-in-arm with the captain, and just about left the ship to sail herself. No wonder the stiffs commenced to believe they could take liberties; in fact, they could take them in the mate's watch, and get away with it.
But they couldn't take liberties in the second mate's watch. You bet they couldn't! Bucko Lynch curbed his vocabulary and stopped using his fists, as the captain ordered, but he didn't stop working his men. There was no slackness in his watch; he kept us up to scratch. That made the starboard stiffs especially bitter against him. They felt themselves cheated of the easy times Fitzgibbon's men were having.
But the sailors didn't feel that way about it. They were worried, just as I was. The sailors knew ships as the stiffs did not. They could feel ships. Those dumb squareheads could not reason it out as I could (with Newman's assistance), but they could feel the undercurrent of intrigue. They were glad to escape the thumpings to which the mates had accustomed them; but they were not satisfied with the new order for they could feel that this strange peace was unreal, unhealthful. Aye, the calm before the typhoon. They felt it just as I felt it, just as Nigger felt it. As for pessimistic Nigger, so strictly did he mind his own business these quiet days he was like a dumb man, a silent brown shadow. But he went on sharpening his knife.
To heighten the squareheads' foreboding, and to scare the wits half out of us all, Nils' ghost visited the ship. You know what sort of men we were in that foc'sle; save Newman and the parson, we were ignorant men, and superstitious. We all believed implicitly in ghosts, I, and the squareheads, Nigger and Cockney, and even the stiffs who had not the sea in their blood. Aye, even Blackie and Boston believed in haunts. It seemed reasonable to us that Nils should come back to the scene of his earthly misery. Reasonable, and fearsome.