Thus simply did an alert mind solve all difficulties of the situation.
So in the end, Zeke issued safely from his first bout with mischance and found himself well content, for his dress now was more like that of the men about him. The new trousers were full length, which the jeans had not been, and the creases down the legs were in the latest style. The salesman had so stated, and Zeke observed with huge satisfaction that the stiffness of the creases seemed to mark the quality of the various suits visible in the streets. And his own creases were of the most rigid! Zeke for the first time in his life, felt that warm thrill which characterizes any human integer, whether high or low, when conscious of being especially well dressed.
Followed an interval of loitering. The sights of the town formed an endless panorama of wonder to the lad’s eager vision. Though he was a year past the age of man’s estate, this was his first opportunity 38 of beholding a town of any size, of seeing face to face things of which he had heard a little, had read more. His fresh, receptive mind scanned every detail with fierce concentration of interest, and registered a multitude of vivid impressions to be tenaciously retained in memory.
And ever with him, as he roamed the streets, went a tall slender girl, barefooted, garbed in homespun, with great dark brown eyes that looked tenderly on him from beneath the tumbled bronze masses of her hair. No passer-by saw her, but the mountaineer knew her constant presence, and with her held voiceless communion concerning all things that he beheld. His heart exulted proudly over the bewildering revelations of many women, both beautiful and marvelously clad in fine raiment—for this girl that walked with him was more radiantly fair than any other.
It was late afternoon when, finally, Zeke aroused himself to think of the necessities of his position. Then, after a hasty and economical meal at a lunch counter near the water-front, he made haste to the pier, where his attention was at once riveted on an Old Dominion Liner, which was just backing out into the river. He watched the great bulk, fascinated, while it turned, and moved away down the harbor, to vanish beyond Sewall’s Point, on its way toward Hampton Roads. Immediately afterward, his attention 39 was attracted to a much smaller steamer, which drew in on the opposite side of the wharf. There chanced to be no one else near, and, as the boat slid into the slip, a man in the bow hurled a coil of rope toward Zeke, with an aim so accurate that it fell across Zeke’s shoulder.
“Don’t dodge it, you lubber!” the man roared, in answer to the mountaineer’s instinctive movement. “Haul it in, an’ make fast to the punchin’.”
Zeke obeyed readily enough, hauled in the hawser, and made the loop fast over the piling. At the same moment, he saw two negroes, blacker from soot and grime than nature had made them, who leaped down from the deck, and scampered out of sight. He heard the captain in the pilot-house shouting down the tube.
“There go your––nigger stokers on the run.”
Zeke could both see and hear the man in the engine-room, who vowed profanely that he would ship a pair of white men, to sail before ten that night. It seemed to the listener that the situation might develop to his advantage. When, presently, the captain descended to the dock, Zeke made bold to accost that red-faced and truculent-appearing person. Much to his surprise, his request for work met with an amiable reply. The captain verified what Zeke already knew, that the engineer had 40 need of men, and bade the inquirer get aboard and offer himself.
In the engine-room, the harried chief scowled on the intruder.