[CHAPTER III.]
Before the following Spring term was half ended I began to plan my second trip to Europe.
The work on the ship the second trip over was practically the same, but I had a number of experiences which were new to me.
On this trip there were in all thirteen cattlemen on board, eight college fellows, the foreman and four hoboes. There was "Frenchy," our foreman, an excitable man with an irritable temper, who did not know that men were not to be abused, but in some cases be coaxed.
Another member of the bunch was "Smithy," a little clumsily built fellow, with red whiskers and cross eyes, who had driven eight horses to one of Sells Brothers' Circus wagons for a number of years, and who was in every respect a typical hobo.
Then there was "Rates," a good sort of fellow he was, and at times I really felt sorry for him. He was the hardest worker in the lot and often did twice his share when the other fellows were sick. "Rates" had been a cowboy in Dakota for a number of years, and enlisting in the United States Army while there, he went to the Philippines as a cavalryman, where he remained two years. With us, he was making his first trip across. From London I learned he went to Capetown, South Africa.
The greatest character on board was old Cole. In all my life I have never seen a man his equal in many respects. Medium in size with brawny arms and an over-developed muscular neck, he reminded one of a huge beast, muscles superbly developed and mind untrained. Cole was some forty years of age, and a boaster from the word "Go." At the early age of ten he ran away from his parents in Norway, and secured passage on a sail boat bound for Odessa on the Black Sea. I think him one of the most interesting talkers, from a certain standpoint, I have ever conversed with. At times he would charm me for hours with his tales of adventure by sea and land. I became so intensely interested in this man that at night, when all had retired save the watchman, I would sit with him on deck for hours and hear him spin his tales of the past. Cole had been around the world several times and had visited every continent on the globe. In the heart of India he had served as a lackey to a very rich man; in Australia he herded sheep for two seasons; in Japan he was hostler for an American planter; in South Africa he mined, and in South America, at Buenos Ayres, he worked in the shipyards. Thirty years of his life he had spent in travel. Whiskey and tobacco he craved.
Old man Miller was our night watchman. He was a good old fellow, who did his duty and never had much to say. A baker in Baltimore, he became tired of his occupation, and feeling need of a change, he had sought a cattle boat for recreation.