It was a bad beginning for a long voyage.
Gantline came on deck as soon as he could finish his dinner, and wanted to know what the trouble was about, but that was all he said. He found no fault with my remarks nor with my actions. A ship's officer must maintain discipline, and discipline cannot be maintained without respect.
Miss MacDonald came up with her aunt, and I went below to my dinner. As I passed the door of the forward house leading into the cabin, the stout Chink who seemed to be a close chum of the big leader glared at me. He had a sinister face, with little slits of eyes that looked slantwise, like the eyes of a wolf.
His moustaches were thin and straight along his lip, until they reached the corners of his wide mouth, then they suddenly dropped straight down, and hung like the tusks of a walrus, two thin, black points of hair about six inches long. They gave him the appearance of some carnivorous animal, fierce, saturnine and dangerous.
Instead of slamming him for his insolence, I pretended not to see him, and passed in, yet the look stayed with me, and I remembered it at intervals. He was a wolf, all right, a human wolf—but I was to find that out later.
"What do you think of our passengers—the coolies?" I asked Jack, the steward, who sat at my mess next the carpenter, Oleson.
"Watch them, Mr. Garnett, watch them," he warned. "I've seen some mighty bad Chinks leaving the coast lately. These men belong to tongs—hatchet men—and if you'll take my word for it you will find plenty of long, black-barreled guns tucked somewhere in their dunnage. But the hatchet is their game for those they have a grudge against—hatchets don't make a noise at night."
"They won't get about the decks in my watch, to use any hatchets, or guns, either, for that matter," I answered. "I'll tuck them in snug to bed at eight bells."
"Hatchet's a bad thing at night," put in Oleson. "I'll put a heavy staple on their door after they turn in."
In my watch below I read ancient magazines until I fell asleep. In my dreams I saw that stout Chinaman's face with the pointed whiskers and slant eyes peering down over me. In his hand was a little, thin-bladed hatchet, like a tomahawk, and as I reached up for him I awoke with a start, shivering in spite of the heat.