"Why—yes," agreed Madden, a little taken aback, "but you look like you might be getting up a grouch at something—"
"About time to pull up, isn't it?" interrupted Smith.
The brusqueness in the speech grated on Madden, but they hauled up their platform without further remarks on either side. The Englishman seemed to work slower than the American, but somehow covered as much ground.
The coat of red paint had risen considerably on the dock when the bosun's whistle gave a faint shrill from the deck. The whole string of painters facing the pontoon's bow began hauling up their platforms. The lads followed their example.
Malone was hastily pulling his crew together in the mess room on the middle pontoon. He came by waving his short heavy arms in the direction of the long eating room.
"Get along aft; you're to sign the ship's papers!" he bawled monotonously. "Get along!"
Most of the men walked faster when the mate flung his arms at them. Leonard felt the impulse to step livelier but held himself to Caradoc's deliberate stride.
In the mess room the boys found a compact, black-haired, serious-faced young man of unknown nationality reading the ship's articles in an expressionless tone. Nobody listened, although various penalties were prescribed for desertion, quitting ship without leave, disobedience of orders, each with its particular fine or punishment. When the reader finished, the men walked around one by one and signed the register. Then a copy of the articles was pointed out on the side of the mess room, and again no one observed.
The performance was hardly completed when the gong rang for supper. There were not more than a dozen men at mess. Most were of stolid English navvy type, dirty uncouth men whose gross irregular features told of low birth and evil life. The foreign element comprised an Irishman named Mike Hogan and the Frenchman whom the boys had met when they first came aboard. The crowd called him Dashalong. Upon inquiry, Leonard found it to be Deschaillon. The young man who read the articles was named Farnol Greer. However, he proved a silent, taciturn youth, who seemed to converse with no one and to have no friends.
In the long narrow eating cabin mingled the clean smell of newly sawed lumber and the odor of poor cookery. The meal proved rather worse than ordinary steerage food. After the first taste Smith put it by, grumbling. Leonard, who was hungry, consumed about half of his.