“Here, pore fellow. You are a long-shore swab, but I knows by your look ye are married. Take them, blast ye!” And he flung his trousers from him. “This bean-swillin’ mate is too mean to give ye anything.”
“Not I!” bawled Enlis, casting off his belt. “Here, you swivel-eyed land-crab;” and he drew off his trousers likewise and handed them to the beggar.
“Thanky,” hissed the creature, and ran away.
The men in the boat looked up the street towards where they heard singing, and they beheld two very drunken men in flowing jumpers staggering trouserless along, while their voices roared upon the quiet night,—
“A Bully sailed from Bristol town,
Singing yo, ho, ho, oh, blow a man down;
A Bully sailed, and made a tack,
Hooray for the Yankee Jack,
Waiting with his yard aback,
Soo-aye! Hooray! Oh, knock a man down.”
CAPTAIN CRAVEN’S COURAGE
EVERY man develops during the period of his growth a certain amount of nerve-power. This energy or life in his system will usually last him, with ordinary care, twoscore or more years before it fails. Sometimes it is used prodigally, and the man suffers the consequence by becoming a debtor to nature. It is this that makes the ending of many overbold men out of keeping with their lives. Some religious enthusiasts would have it that they are repentant towards the end of their careers,—that is, if they have not led conventional lives,—and that accounts for their general break-down from the high courage shown during their prime. Among sailors, soldiers, hunters, and others who live hard lives of exposure, the strain is sometimes peculiarly apparent.
It is often the case that the man of hard life dies before his life-flame burns low, and then he is sometimes classed as a hero. For instance, the captain of the Penguin, who ran his ship ashore on the North Head of San Francisco Bay, was the most notorious desperado in the whole Cape Horn fleet. Many men who sailed with him never saw the land again. Their names appeared upon his log as “missing,” “lost overboard in heavy weather,” etc. Investigation of such matters resulted in nothing but expense to the courts and the development of the ruffian’s sinister character and reputation. Yet when he ran the Penguin ashore with the terrible southeast sea rolling behind her, he maintained his rigid discipline to the last and saved his passengers and part of his crew. He died as a brave man should, never flinching from his post until his life was crushed out.
There were some who said he dared not come ashore, as he had overrun his distance through carelessness, and that without the backing of his ship’s owners he would have been stranded in a bad way upon the beach. But the majority were willing to forget his record in his gallant end, and he will be known in the future by the men who follow deep-water as a hero.