There were two big five-masters lying just outside of us in the channel and their masters were known to me. One of them had picked me up at sea from a derelict and the other was Bull Simpson, well known on the coast. Simpson was much given to gregariousness. Johnson was companionable, but quiet, and I knew they would be in Jackson's store that morning, for they would clear the next day.
The day was in midwinter. The gloomy sky whipped by the nor'wester showed signs of snow. How one hates snow at sea! The nasty white stuff making the decks like glass, hiding everything from view. The harbor was white with the scrape of the cold wind, and the salt water froze where it struck in spray. Yes, I would go to Jackson's store. The shipping looked too gloomy to contemplate any longer. I thought of the frozen fingers handling canvas stiff as tin.
The stove, a ship's bogie, was red hot in the back room. Simpson was there, long, lean and solemn. So was Johnson there, but he was smiling, smoking and so glad to be in harbor that it stuck out all over him. Captain Cone, master of a tramp steamer, sat near and warmed his fat toes, his pudgy hands red with frost.
"Go back, they're all there," grinned Jackson to me, as I passed the desk. "Thought you'd gone to sea—sech fine wedder—for gulls—what? Go back an' set in, Cap; I'll come back for your order presently."
"Hello, you look cool," said Johnson, smiling up at me from his chair.
"Glad to see you—set in," said Simpson, making room for a chair near the bogie. "Shake hands with Captain Cone of the Prince Albert—Cone has a good tea-kettle for this weather—don't you wish you ran a tramp? Please? No, I didn't hear that last——"
I bowed to the Captain. A captain of a tramp was something new to us. We seldom had any but sailormen in the group and British skippers were always looked upon as a rarity. Still they were always welcome. Cone stuck out his pudgy hand. I squeezed the fat fingers until he winced and withdrew them. I never cared for pudgy-handed seamen—just prejudice, a meanness, but it couldn't be helped. We can't help everything, we must be human, and Cone took it good-naturedly—was way above such things. He showed it by spitting voluminously at the bogie and remarking it was very cold to go to sea.
Simpson didn't like it at all. He showed it, grumbled something about Yankees and stiff-necked folks, then subsided while I lit up and gazed complacently at Johnson. We talked of various things until Cone rose, buttoned his coat and went into the office to fill his order. Simpson glared at me for a moment.
"What's the use of being so damned short with the Britisher? What's he done?" he asked.
"It's what he hasn't done I object to," I answered. "Stupid, heavy brute——"