The Project Gutenberg eBook of The S.S. Glory, by Frederick Niven

Somebody was playing a mouth-organ in the midst of a group of "hard cases" that waited on a certain wharf at Montreal. You who arrive there in spick and span passenger steamers can pick out the place from the promenade decks as you come alongside, for on the shed roofs is painted, with waterproof paint, "The Saint Lawrence Shipping and Transport Co., Ltd."

At the gable of these sheds the Hard Cases waited, alert for anybody of importance coming from citywards. But they did not forget that the important person might be already in the sheds. Therefore, as they strolled a step or two forth and back, or double-shuffled in response to the mouth organ, they cast glances now and then into the shed, between the lattice-work of a barrier at its end, a barrier that continued the slope of the roof to the wharf-side and about a foot beyond. A determined man could have clambered round it at the projecting part, or over it for that matter—although it looked fragile at the top as well as showing many prominent nails. But no one did clamber over it, or round it even. In America there is a sneaking regard for the man who climbs over, or crawls round, barricades; but it was hardly likely that any of the Hard Cases, who waited for a job outside the barrier, would have obtained that job at the end of such gymnastics. These men were not hoboes, tramps, sundowners, beachcombers, though there was not a handkerchief-full of luggage in the crowd. They were cattlemen, who lead a life more hard and uncertain than that of sparrows, crossing and recrossing the great, grey Atlantic, with Liverpool for their British port; and, for their American ports, Montreal, Halifax, Boston.

The "Push" glanced at "this"—a lean man, brown as an Indian, wearing a broad-brimmed hat that set him apart from the "Push," which wore, chiefly, scooped sailor-caps, and, secondly, dilapidated Trilbys. True, the latter were of felt, but only in regard to material were they like this hat that hove in sight on the newcomer's head.

"What's he?" asked Jack, a slender and finely-built young man with a face handsome and devil-may-care and cunning, a face oddly aristocratic though leathery, and bearing signs that ablution was not a daily matter in his life any more than in the lives of the others.

"It's one of them cow-boys," said Mike. "One of them fellers that comes from beyant, in the cars with the cattle, and takes a thrip over sometimes to see what its loike in our counthry."

"Well, ye needn't be supposing till ye hear," answered Mike. "I never seen wan of them do that yet."

The newcomer approached more closely and looked at the crowd, one of whose members, an inquisitive youth, caught his eye and daringly proffered assistance.

The "Push" that had been listening mostly in quarter and three-quarter face, wheeled about, and all their "dials," as they would have expressed it, confronted him.

Jack extracted himself from the "Push" to spit over the wharf-side, and then turned back again.

"What are ye all talking about?" he said. "I tell ye what it is, now," he went on, turning to the stranger. "There's some of these fellers go over for tin shillin's; the most of them don't get more'n a pound, and when it's getting cold here you'll find 'em runnin' round and saying, 'I'll go for fifteen shillin's, mister.' But if ye came down from beyant in the cars yourself ye're all right. You fellers that come down from The Great Plains goes on with your own cattle on the ships if ye want."

"Want more than ten shillings," said the subject of their discussion. "Ten shillings for across the Atlantic! Good Lord!"

"Well, young feller," he said, "you've no cause for worry. It doesn't matter whether ye came down in the cattle cars or not. That hat of yours will get ye the first chance."

Some of them laughed, and he turned and looked scathingly at them, but did not deign to explain that he was serious. Cockney, who had understood the significance of Mike's words, if he did not now come over exactly as ally to the newcomer, at least withdrew from his position as a possible enemy.

"That's right!" he declared. "That's the kind of 'at the fellers wear up there w'ere the cattle comes from. You hask thirty shillings. You know about cattle any'ow wiv that 'at. They'll bring yer down to a quid. Well, that's all right, ain't it? Good luck."

The others seemed to see the justice of this. Mike hitched his belt and regained his position as Bull of that herd by saying: "Pay no attintion to thim——"

"That's all right, that's all right," said Mike soothingly to him. "You're all right. See, young feller,"—to the man with the Stetson hat—"you come over here beside me and I'll tell you when there's a chance."

"Well," said the young fellow, "ten bob to 'tend cattle across the Atlantic seems pretty poor. I'll ask thirty."

"Well, ye can't do better than that, can ye?" answered Mike. "Askin' it, I mane."

Cockney whirled round upon someone who had muttered, and thrust forward his face at the end of an elastic neck.

"No, he's not—'e's not goin' over fer nuthin'! Didn't yer 'ear 'im say? I bet yer 'e'll go over fer more'n you."

A short broad man, somewhat like Mike in miniature, declaimed: "What's the use o' listening? Can't believe anybody. I hear a feller say: 'I wouldn't go over for ten shillings—wouldn't go over for less than two quid.' Believe he goes over just to get across—for nothing."

"No," said the miniature edition of Mike, "I don't mean him. He's not a liar anyhow. I can tell that. I mean fellers that talks and talks about what they would do and what they wouldn't do."

"Pay no attintion to thim fellers," said Mike, less talking to the newcomer in particular than generally, to those in the group who had ears to hear. And then to his new friend: "You didn't come down in the cars then, young feller?"

"That's good enough," said Mike, in the accents of one instilling hope. "There's no need to answer what they don't ask. You look as if you came from beyant. Let yer hat spake for ye. Here he comes now."

Hands behind back, walking slow, came a man of forty or so, lean, grizzled, projecting himself with easy swinging steps toward the "Push," looking at them, head bent, from under his brows, with eyes so calculating and keen that the glance might have been considered malevolent were it not for a faint smile, or suggestion of a smile, about his close-pressed lips. There was a fresh agitation among the "Push," as of a pool when a stone is dropped therein. Mike stood a little more erect and drew his chin back. The aristocratic-looking Jack—in some queer way, despite his old, seedy, hand-me-down garments, he was almost dandyish—hands in pockets, jacket wrinkled up behind, body canted backwards, strolled out of the group a step or two with eyes on the man who advanced upon them, and strolled back again, as one who would draw attention to himself.

"Is this one of the bosses?" inquired the young man who had come by kind request if not exactly under Mike's wing at least to his side.

"Candlass," he said; and Candlass coming now level with them, Mike leant towards him and made a grimace which evidently Candlass understood. The others, at this, tried to crowd in between them. Candlass frowned grimly, opened a door in that latticed barricade between shed and wharf-side, and passed through. The "Push"—one might now have a hint of the derivation of its name—flocked after him, but he stood in the narrow entrance way and considered it over his shoulder as a man looks at a bunch of doubtful dogs that snap at his heels. Mike commented, in the background: "What are yez all crowding for? He'll tell ye when he wants us." Candlass closed the gate in the barricade, moved slowly away, but was still to be seen by those outside. He walked along the wharf looking up at the iron wall of the S.S. Glory that lay there, considered the high-sided cattle gangways that stretched up to the hull. Then he turned away and disappeared in the rear of the nearest shed, to reappear anon with a stout, fatherly man whose clothes had the appearance of rather being made to measure than reached off a hook. This man seemed to be trying to look grim, but when Candlass swung over to the barricade, whipped open the door, and wheeled back again as a sign to the "Push" to enter—and they did enter—any mere looker-on could have seen a quick droop of his eyelids, a momentary biting of his lip as of a man who is hurt in some way. There was a deal of the milk of human kindness about Mr. Smithers, wharf-manager of the St. Lawrence Shipping and Transport Co., and he never became used to the Hard Cases. He often wanted to know all about them, where they were born, how they lived, what they thought of it all. Some of the men, out of their breast-pockets, were tentatively withdrawing bundles of discharge papers lest John Candlass might care to see them. Candlass looked over the crowd again as it thronged into the St. Lawrence shed. He spoke now, for the first time, and his voice was amazingly quiet.

"I don't want you ," he said to one man, with a quick lift of his eyebrows; and the man went out backwards, and swiftly, suggesting in his manner that he was ready either to put up a fight if pursued, or to turn tail and run the moment he passed through the barrier again. He backed away from the sultry and quiet Candlass much as a lion-tamer leaves a cage. Another man prepared to follow him, yet not as if whole-hearted in his retreat. Candlass had an eye on him.

"Er——" he began, in the tone of one who considers to himself. The retreating man heard this and paused like a weather-cock in a lull, looked at Candlass, and Candlass looked at him. They studied each other thus in a way that made the others, brief though the time of study might be, realise that there had been some prior understanding or misunderstanding, between the two.

"Well," said Candlass, still in that low voice, "if you think you can behave yourself."

"All right then," said Candlass. "You can wait around and I'll see—if I don't get plenty otherwise. Leave it that way."

"All right. Come this way, boys," said Mr. Smithers. But though he straightened his back and thrust his neck into his collar in the recognised attitude of people who are not to be trifled with, there was something paternal that he could not efface from himself as he walked over to a little office on wheels that stood in a backward corner of the shed. In the wall of this box contrivance a small window opened on his arrival, and a clerk was beheld within.

Mike elbowed himself to leading position, looking round at his new friend. "You come with me, lad." And when some grumbled, "Well, well," he said. "We all have a chance."

The man to whom Candlass had decided to give another trial strolled backward and stood beyond the group so as to be last in the string.

"Now then, come along," said Smithers, and tapped twice with the end of a fountain pen on the little ledge before the diminutive window. The "Push," realising that all would have a chance, seeing how few there were, did not crowd now. There was more of: "You go ahead"—"No, that's all right, you go!"—than of anxiety. One by one they stepped up to the wicket, to one side of which Smithers leant, and in front of which Candlass had taken his stand. Each in turn exchanged a few quiet words with these two; the clerk within, pen in hand, bent over his tome, giving ear at the window. Once or twice Candlass looked round and beckoned to a man, when the group, milling instead of retaining the queue, was slow to decide who should go next. He did this by raising a hand, thumb and forefinger in air, looking keen and cold in some man's eye, and then flicking down the forefinger and dropping his hand to his side again. While this signing on was still in progress there entered the shed, slowly swinging his legs forward, clad in dirty khaki, large-hatted like the young man of whom we have already heard, a close-lipped, short-nosed youth. Candlass remarked him as he came in and said: "All right, you. Come ahead."

"One of the fellows what come down in the cars," it was suggested, or explained.

A little later there came a man in a long coat, tweed cap, heavy boots, leggings, wearing spectacles.

"Did that come down in the cars?" inquired a little pale-faced, thin-handed youngster.

Mike, standing over to one side with those who had already signed on, offered explanation:

"He's one of them young fellers from up behind somewheres. Comes from feedin' pigs, and doin' the chores, and what they call learnin' farmin'." He noticed that his newly adopted friend had allowed some others to precede him and had not yet signed on. "Go on there forward, young feller," he admonished. "Take your turn there after Four Eyes with the coat."

"Go on, then, go on," chorussed several of the "Push," and he who, though he wore the Hat of the Great Plains, had not come down on the cars with cattle, as indeed had that other large-hatted recent arrival, stepped up to the wicket. The onlookers noticed that with him, as with others, there was evidently a little bargaining being done.

CHAPTER II

When the young man to whom Mike had extended kindness passed from the wicket, having agreed to tend cattle across the Atlantic for the sum of fifteen shillings, he found that he had already been christened. Perhaps his lack of diffidence in signing his name in the book which was turned round to him by the clerk, after the quiet discussion of terms was over, had suggested the new name to Mike.

"How much are you going to get?" asked the Inquisitive One, jumping forward, left shoulder advanced, and thrusting his face close to Scholar.

"He's after getting as much as you!" said Mike. "Don't you be telling him, Scholar, or he'll be running back to the wicket and saying: 'I want as much as the other feller there.'"

The Inquisitive One contented himself by looking at Mike's boots, trousers and belt, torn waistcoat, shirt, and black-and-white scarf, briefly at his face, and then, turning about, executed a heel and toe movement of right foot and left foot alternately, looking at the others and inclining his head towards Mike, in a kind of silent, noncommittal: "You observe?" Mike, too, observed, as his slight drawing erect signified, the slight toss of his chin, a dismissing toss, somewhat leonine. Then his eye rested on the youth in the long coat, and disapproval was in his eye. He had no objection to cattlemen in big hats from "beyant," who had come down in the cars with cattle, continuing across the Atlantic. He had no objection to other young men in big hats, who had not come down with cattle, but who wanted to cross the Atlantic. But that heavy, stolid, long-coated, legginged, spectacled lout seemed to him an indignity thrust upon them. He studied him a long while, with his weight now upon left foot, right advanced, toe tapping the cobbles, anon shifting weight to his right foot, leaning back, left foot advanced and left shoulder almost in a fighting attitude. The man in the long coat did not seem to be one of them. He might be going over this way simply to save money, not because he was hard up. It was different with the short-nosed man in the old soiled khaki; he did not seem to be by any means on his uppers, but he looked as one to whom all this was part of the day's work. His arrival had shown more clearly that Scholar might not be typical of men from "beyant," or "the Great Plains where the cattle comes from," despite his hat, but Scholar still remained not anathema; he was brown with the sun and the open air, and he had that touch of vagabondage that made him welcome although an outsider. He had come into their midst with an air of "If you don't mind, boys," but that long-coated, and leggined, and spectacled one didn't come in at all; he was just there. Mike had to ask the opinions of the others at this stage.

"What do you think of that?" he said quietly. "Is that a Jonah? Don't like the look of it. Looks a Jonah."

Long Jack's partner, whose name was Johnnie, and who had a way of varying the double-shuffling to the mouth-organ by striking belligerent attitudes at the others and making feints at them with a fist, paused in his mixture of double-shuffle and pugilistic rehearsal, to look at the subject of Mike's doubt.

" That! " he said. He peered at him, walked a little way toward him where he stood aloof, whirled on his heel, and coming back to the group, raised a fist as if to smite and announced: "He's one of them fellers that goes up on the Ontario farms, up in the bush—half silly, farmers get them for their board; learn to milk cows, shovel horse dung, and all that."

Mike's expression was like that of a man disgusted. Had he not already told them this? Candlass put an end, for the time being, to farther speculation.

"Get on to the main deck, you fellows," he ordered, "and you'll see some bales of hay there. Cut them open and bed down."

The "Push" began to swarm up one of the gangways, the one nearer to them, that led to the lower deck. Mike looked at it; its condition showed that lower deck cattle were already on board.

"Indade," he said, "there's no sense in dirtying your shoes before ye nade to," and he led the way to the second gangway, which was canted up to the main deck, and was clean. The ascent was not much steeper, for the gangway was longer and led off from farther back on the wharf.

"Oh, all right," said Candlass, as he saw his men going up in two portions. "It's all the same." But he called after those who were going up to the lower deck: "Don't you fellows hang about down there when you get aboard."

They nodded, and some responded with an "Aye, aye, sir," and up they ran, talking and laughing among themselves in jeering fashion. Candlass stood on the dock and waited till they were on board, so that those that turned their heads, when they stepped on deck, to look down, met his eye. The "Push" gathered on the main deck. Those who had gone direct to it, looking down the hatches, could see, what those who had come up the other way already knew, that the lower deck cattle were already all on board. The full complement was already there; and beyond the docks were now the cling-clang of an advancing bell, a locomotive bell, and more lowing of cattle. Amidships many bales of hay had been tumbled.

"There's a queer fellow below with an axe," volunteered one of those who had come up by the lower deck. "Here he comes."

He came. He came as if to slaughter them all, a man of maybe fifty, shirt open, one brace sustaining his trousers, bald-headed, almost toothless, scarred upon the forehead. He was neither fat nor lean, showing at once many protuberant bones, cheek and chin and breast bones, and rolls of fat under chin, and on abdomen, to which his shirt clung, damp from excessive labour in the stuffy ship. He charged upon the bales of hay, smote furiously at the wires that bound them, heedless of the possible scratches when they sprung apart, and yelling, "Here you are! Roll it away—roll that away now," rolled the bale over himself so that it fell apart as in compressed cakes or slices. "Well, if you won't roll, carry away, carry away," he went on, hitting the next bale; and, dodging his axe, the "Push" gathered armfuls and hastened off to shake and to tease out these armfuls into the strong pens ranged all round the ship's sides and down the ship's centre, ranged so closely that if two men passed abreast they had need to be slender men. Hardly had they finished coming and going on this employment than the ki-yi-ing of men's voices, and the lowing of beasts caused the bedders-down to pause and give ear. The man who had broken open the bales suddenly appeared again, screaming oaths. "Come along here, and tie up!"

Blundering up the deck, up the gangway, came steer after steer. When they found themselves aboard, with bars such as the corral bars that they knew of old before them, they wheeled sharply and away they went running, lowing, away forward, then across the ship and down the other side. The man with the axe rushed across, and every here and there thrust a plank from front barrier to ship's side, turning the long corral that ran round the ship into many smaller pens. Then came a cessation in the river of steers that ran aboard.

"Come over here and I'll show you, Scholar," said Mike. What Mike had to show to the tenderfoot cattleman was how to take the ropes that hung all along the pen fronts, throw them over the steers' necks, pull the slack end through a hole in the flat front board, knot it, and then let it go. The hole in each case was only large enough to admit of the rope, consequently the knot upon the end was all that was necessary for making fast. It was a duty not without some excitement, for the steers, arranged now in pens, thanks to the boards that the Mad Boss had thrust across (five, six, or seven to a pen), would persist in milling. Round and round they moved, and before each pen a man, or two men, worked. After a few minutes the steers in the pen before which Mike and Scholar laboured had each a rope tied round its neck. That was the first duty done, not without scrimmage. And now they went on to the second part of that work, the making fast. As steer by steer was hauled up to the board, and the rope pulled through, there was trouble.

"Watch your hands!" shouted Mike, hanging on to a halter while Scholar tried to affix the knot. His shout was barely in time. The steer flung backward, and smack went Scholar's hand against the board, for he still clung tenaciously to the rope's end. "All right!" he replied, for he had succeeded in making the knot just in time, and when the steer strained back the knot also smacked on the board. A tug of war began upon the next one. Farther away a sudden shout arose, and they looked along the deck. The Mad Boss, who had been armed with an axe a short time previously, was now blaspheming against the ship's side. He had jumped into one of the pens, armed with a stick, in an endeavour to make the animals face the front board, and one of them now had propped itself against him. There was an unholy glee on the faces of some of the men, those who looked upon the squeeze that he was getting as good punishment for his method of treating them.

"You, you——" he half gurgled, half shouted a series of scathing names at them. He caught Scholar's eye. "Can't you lend a hand here?"

Scholar could lend a hand. He grabbed up a piece of stick and vaulted into the pen. After all, he had signed on as a cattleman, and a long horn must not intimidate him. He hoped that even if he had not signed on his pause before leaping to the rescue would have been of no longer duration. The very close proximity of the steers among which he leapt was his salvation. There was not room for them to run upon him, heads down. He gave two twists to the tail of the steer that had pinned the mad foreman; it relaxed and swung round facing the tying board, where Mike adroitly grabbed the rope, hauled the loose end through, and knotted it—just in time. Back went the animal's head, and smack came the knot against the board.

"Now, you," said the mad-looking boss to Scholar. "Take care of yourself. I'm all right now—aisy there. Slip over."

Scholar watched for his chance; but he did not slip over. The chance came to slip under, and he did so, coming on to the alley-way with a kind of side dive, while the man to whose rescue he had gone, seizing a favourable opportunity, dodged into the neighbouring pen and from thence gained the alley-way.

"Him? Oh, he's bossing the Lower Deck, but he's come up here till Candlass comes aboard, I suppose."

Perhaps two hours later this instalment of steers was all tied up, and the remaining space of deck, awaiting the next batch, was almost all strewn with hay. Many of the men seemed bored. There was a constant hinting that an adjournment for liquor should be made. Candlass had not yet appeared; Rafferty had disappeared; the "Push" was alone, and Mike seemed to be half in command.

"I tell yez," he said, "there's nobody going ashore till the bedding-down's finished."

"Candlass didn't tell you to——" began he who has been spoken of as a kind of diminutive Mike.

"Never mind what Candlass told me. I'm telling you that if Candlass comes aboard and finds that we haven't finished bedding-down entoirely it's me he'll jump on."

Mike drew erect, stretched, blew a great breath, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

It might have been the Devil that prompted Scholar at that moment. Perhaps he was feeling a little gay after his bout with the steers; perhaps he thought how funny it would be if Mike led the way ashore for refreshment after having so recently proclaimed that no man would go ashore for that purpose until the bedding-down was over. Perhaps he thought to make some sign to these men that he appreciated the fact that they had not all cold-shouldered him as an outsider, and could think of only one way to do it that would seem expressive to them.

It now appeared that many of them had already vacated the deck. Jack and Jack's partner and several others were gone. The cowboy was nowhere to be seen; the man of the long coat and spectacles was all alone, making some knots more sure upon the ropes, tying fresh ones on those that had been knotted so near the end as to suggest to a watchful eye that a few vigorous pulls of a steer's head would make them give.

"We'll lave him," said Mike, and those few who remained hurried to depart, clustering round Mike and Scholar. A bo'sun at the gangway said: "There's some more cattle coming up, you fellows."

One of the "Push" told the bo'sun that there was a parson along there, with spectacles on, who would tie them up, and down the gangway went the crowd. Scholar perhaps need not have been so greatly vexed afterwards for having carried these men away. As they went down the gangway they woke to the fact that they were the only cattlemen left. The others, who had come aboard with them under Candlass's eye, had been more alert to note when the Mad Boss turned his back, and had already hastened off to amuse themselves before sailing. Great sizzling lights were by now lit above the wharf. Back in the shadows of the shed could be seen many tossing horns. Neither Candlass nor the Mad Boss interrupted them. Smithers was not about; perhaps he had gone home to supper. Outside the lath partition was a little new mob of dead-beats, and some of those going out recognized friends there and hailed them. There was a smell of docks, and of cattle, and of grain; there was much noise of iron gangways being run to and fro, cling-clang of locomotive bells, hiss of the new-lit lights. Things were all in just uncertain enough light for a man here and there to stub a toe on a stretched hawser. Overhead an exquisite pale blue, and fading pink, showed the aftermath of the day, high, far-off, serene.

CHAPTER III

Lamplight and daylight blent in the waterfront streets, and as the little crowd of men left the more open wharf front, where there was also some reflected last daylight from the docks and the river, a looker-on might have been touched deeply, seeing the quick-going day, the gathering shadows in the gulches of the streets, the lighting up of the saloons, and that knot of men, more homeless than sparrows, drifting across the twilight. And they were not of the bottom rung, at least not in their own estimation. A man in the uniform of the Salvation Army passed by, and that member of the "Push" who looked like a squat Mike, and whose name, it transpired, was Michael, turned to Scholar and commented: "I suppose the Salvation Army does some good in its own way—among the lowest classes." And again a few paces on, when one of the men in the rear broke out: "Here, where are you fellows going? What's the matter with this?" Michael looked over his shoulder and shook his head in dissent; and a little further still, as the man behind was still wanting to know what was the matter with the saloon in question: "We don't want to go in there," Michael said. "There ain't enough of us. That's a bad, low-down joint."

"There's a bad push goes in there," said Michael, "and you don't stand a show if you're not in the swing."

"Mike," he said, "here's a fellow wants to know what they would do with him back there."

"What they would do to him, is it?" asked Mike. "It all depinds whether he feels in his pockuts and fetches out the nate money as if it was his last nickel."

"But if ye want to see the whole thing for yoursilf, my device to you, me lad, is to plant down a dollar—if ye have it. If ye hadn't plenty of fighting friends with ye, ye might just as well hand it to them. If it's a rough house ye're wantin', we might all go in and oblige ye, but spakin' for mesilf, I'm wantin' a quiet drink."

"That's right," Michael commented quietly, with a nod to Scholar, by whose side he marched. "Partner of mine once went in there. I think meself that some fellow slipt up and drugged his beer, for when he comes near the tail of the glass he feels kind of funny, ye know, and he came outside. He was for walking out into the main streets, and then he thinks some bull would arrest him for drunk and incapable, for he could hardly stand; so he turns the other way and two fellows came up to him and began talking to him, and asks him what's the matter, and he tumbles to it and tries to walk back the other way again. One of them fellows comes the one side of him and the other the other side, and they says: 'You come along with us, where the bulls won't get you.' And while he's puzzling out which is better, the bulls or them, ye see—well, he doesn't know any more, ye see. And the next he does know, he's wondering where he is anyhow, for the things he's after seeing. It's the backs of the wharfs all upside down, ye see. He's lying there with nothing on him but his pants. The hat on his head, his shirt and his coat, with his discharge papers in it, they've skinned off him; and his boots; and him after having a dollar stowed away in each boot."

"Here you are, Scholar, then," said Mike, in advance, and swung into a saloon, a ramshackle sawdusted place, where, behind a short counter, a lean, sharp-faced man in shirt sleeves looked at them in a way reminiscent of a weasel. All entered with a swagger, each man with whatever change of face was his change of face before possible trouble. Mike jerked up his right shoulder, jerked up his left, hitched his belt, seemed to heave his chest up, and broaden his whole torso. Cockney curved his back, curved also his arms, making the swing of them, instead of by his side, left and right, in front of him, and thrust his face forward, craning his neck. Michael put one hand in his pocket, half-closed his eyes, and slowly, and without expression, his guarded gaze roved from occupant to occupant of the place. The man with the dangerously mad eyes, who it appeared was called Harry, but was referred to simply as Queer, merely sneered slightly, an unpleasant sneer, a one-sided sneer that showed a tooth. The Inquisitive One danced into the place; his name had not yet transpired, but it seemed to be "him," with an indicatory jerk of the thumb, at which he did not take open umbrage, only now and then giving his roving glance from foot to head of whoever thus referred to him. But if he danced in gaily he was none the less alert.

Somebody spoke, and Mike interrupted with: "Where's your manners? Can't you let the man that's going to stand treat ask you what you're going to be after having, without shouting your order like that?" And they lined up against the bar, on which the barman put the palms of his hands, standing before them.

"Well, what will you have, Mike?" asked Scholar. It was the first time he had given him his name, and Mike acknowledged it with a nod. He turned to the bar-keeper.

Michael, catching Scholar's eye, nodded to him, and then to the bar-keeper. "The same for me," he said.

The barman looked along the row and received a series of nods. He glanced at Scholar, elevating his brows, and Scholar inclined his head, and the monster nominal glasses, but really glass jugs with handles, came swift almost as conjuring, one after the other, on to the counter.

The phrase passed along, and the great jugs were held up and the quaffing began. Mike drank a quarter of his, and then turned his back to the bar, and surveyed the room. Over in a corner a faint disturbance arose, sounds of altercation, somebody telling someone else that he would push his face in. Mike looked into the corner, impassive. He leant forward and dragged a high stool over to the counter.

The narrow swing doors opened; a slight draught of air, cooler than the air within, caused them to glance round. A furtive and evil face showed for a moment in the middle of the strip of dark, blue night, and then was withdrawn. Michael looked at Mike to see if he had noticed that observer who came and went. Scholar sat up on the high stool.

"I don't know if you're fond of entering into scraps," said Mike quietly. "But don't you do it. It's a way some of these fellows have. Hearken to 'em now!"

This half-dozen or so of the "Push" of the S.S. Glory applied itself to its beer, and to talk, two by two. It had the air of partitioning itself off from the rest of the house; it was a private party.

"Order!" cried the bar-keeper, shoving his chin at those in the noisy corner. "Order, please!"

A man danced from the corner, beseeching another to "stand out." Scholar glanced in the direction of the group from which he had come, and it struck him that one or two faces there were turned more toward the men of the Glory than toward the combative person. At one small table, that stood all by itself, there had been, so far, a newspaper and two red fists; the newspaper came down now a little way and a face looked over the top, a face as red as the fists that had shown on each side. The bar-keeper's hands were flat on the counter again; he was looking (almost stupidly it seemed) at the man who desired trouble, but now his eye roved toward the face that appeared over the newspaper's top.

"Order, sir!" he said again, looking once more at the man who had stood up and forth to demand war.

Mike drained his glass; his eyes were very bright. He turned, and leaning against the counter, looked at the belligerent one, met his eye, cleared his throat oddly, and heaved up his chest. It struck Scholar that the beer acted quickly upon Mike.

Mike took a fierce step forward—he who had but a moment ago advised Scholar to keep out of such trouble. The eyes of the bar-keeper and of the man behind the newspaper again met. Down went the newspaper, up came the man. He walked over to the blusterer and addressed a knothole in the planks before his feet.

"I'll have to ask you to get out," he said, speaking to the knot-hole, and then glanced at the man.

The actions were then as quick as when two cats, the preamble over, decide to come to grips. A whirl of arms and legs went down the middle of the saloon, the swing doors swept left and right and closed again, and the big man was alone now, his eye upon the doors as they wavered to a standstill.

"There you are!" said Michael to Scholar. "That's what I told you—this is a good class house."

"We'd better get back I think," he said. "The rest of the cattle will be coming on board."

"Them is the glasses of beer here," said Mike. "Come along boys, drink up!" he repeated; and he glanced at the door with a kind of hilarity in his eye.

"She can't go out before four or five in the morning," said Mike. "Give us all the same again, Mr. Bar-keeper."

Those who had not finished made haste to do so, and the glasses were replenished. The man who had thrown out the belligerent one had not again taken his seat. He was looking sadly, moodily, at the swing doors. He might have been brooding over some domestic trouble by the look of him. Then he turned about, still looking heavily at the floor, walked rearwards, hands behind back, and took up a position towards the end of the saloon, legs spraddled, swaying up on his toes and coming down on his heels again gently.

"He's after freezing them out," said Michael, seeing Scholar glance at the man of moody weight. The noisy group had probably a like opinion of his brooding proximity, drained its glasses, rose and passed to the door. The heavy man walked slowly in the rear. It was composed of some tough-looking units; but Scholar, who had come down from the lumber camps of Michigan, was not intimidated by their scowling faces. One of them jostled Cockney's elbow, and he turned round, lean and humped like a weasel; but the big man, following just a step behind, thrust his big hand between Cockney and the jostler, and admonished: "Now then, now then. Move on, please!"

"See?" said he. "See? There's nothing on here between the people behind the bar and the people in front, same as in some of them."

Hardly had the last of these ugly fellows departed than the Inquisitive One plucked his elbow and drew him aside, and Scholar was amazed to notice that his utterance was thick as he whispered, a blend of ingratiation and intimidation in his face: "How much are you getting for the trip over?"

"Look here—none of that whispering!" said Mike, the heavy, ready-to-smite look, with which he had watched the departure of the dubious throng, still on his face. "If you fellows have anything to say, say it. Here's a schooner of beer untouched, too!"

"Here's looking at you, then!" said Michael, and, lifting the glass jug, he opened his throat, and holding it rigid as if it were a filler, poured the contents down.

"There y'are!" said Mike. "There y'are! That's a gintleman! That's a gintleman!" And there was a faint thickness in his speech too, as though his tongue was spongy. "I was niver mixed up with such a push in me life—what with whisperin' together and drinking another man's beer."

Cockney broke out, in a jeering voice, eyeing the Inquisitive One and Scholar: "How much are you getting for the trip? Tell me, and see if yer getting something mor'n me."

The stubby Michael caught Scholar by the elbow and drew him away from the inquisitor, who went back to his place at the bar to drain his glass in an offended manner.

"You see, it's like this," began Michael, swaying ever so little towards Scholar. "What these fellows do is this: one of them gets up a row with you, and one of the others comes in as if he was separatin' you. 'Pay no attention to him,' he says. 'Pay no attention to him. You come along of me. You're a good man wantin' to fight when you're insulted, but he's drunk. Pay no attention to him. Come along of me.' And the other fellows say: 'Come along of us!' But they're all of the one push, see? And when you go off with them to talk about the things you would be doin' if they hadn't separated you, ye never know when it's goin' to end. The way that them landsharks goes around looking for honest seamen——"

"I'm askin' ye—I'm askin' ye—I'm askin' yez—are ye goin' to have another drink?" he demanded. "Whisperin' like a lot of girls!"

While he was roaring thus, entered two men, blue-capped and shabbily attired, clean as to face and half the neck, but showing tide marks of scanty washings.

"Well, bejabbers, and how's yourself?" answered Mike. Here was clearly not a case of new and fraudulent friends, for Mike evidently knew them both; having shaken hands with the first he required no introduction to the second, extended his great hand, shook warmly, and cried: "How are you? Have a drink with me!"

"Have a drink with me ," said the man who had first hailed Mike, and he ordered and paid for three glasses of beer. Suddenly he glanced over his shoulder at the other men.

"Oh, indade!" said Mike. "Thim fellers is aither too short in the neck to take more, or they have saycrets to whisper."

Some of the men near the door had gone out, and now the door swung open again, and one shouted: "Shake a leg, push of the S.S. Glory ! Crew of the S.S. Glory , shake a leg!"

"What's the time?" said Scholar, astonished. "It can't be late yet. This place is still open."

"'E thinks 'e's in England," said Cockney, but joyful, not malevolent. "The first thing yer notice in this 'ere country is them bills—'Open day hand night'—and the next thing is the size of them glasses. They look long at first, but you get used to everythink. I could do wiv 'em longer." He drained his glass. "Longer fer me! Longer fer me!" he began to sing, making for the door. Evidently the strains of a Salvation Army song outside had come to his ears through the voices and clatter of the place, for as the doors swung now with the men tumbling out, Scholar heard the beat of a drum and voices singing: "That will be glory, glory for me!" Cockney danced along the street, his wide trousers flapping about his lean shanks, laughing and singing: "Longer fer me! Longer fer me!"

"Tell them to cast off if I don't come!" he replied. "I've met ould friends—and I'm drinkin'."

"Come along, Mike," implored Scholar. There was something like pity in his eye for the great empty-stomached man. They were all empty-stomached—that is so far as to food; and that beer had drugged and stupefied them.

"To hell wid yez all!" cried Mike; and then through the haze in his eyes he peered along the saloon at Scholar. "Stay wid me, Scholar, stay wid me. Let the other fellows go."

"Well, well—God bless you then. Don't let them fellers run it on ye," and Mike waved his hand and turned his back. Outside Michael held the door open with a foot, and when Scholar came out, Michael, withdrawing the foot, seemed to have some difficulty in balancing. Scholar caught his arm.

"What are you holdin' me for?" said Michael. "There's nothing the matter with me!"

He persisted with this remark all the way to the corner in the rear of the others, varying it now and then with: "I'm all right." At the corner were two men that Scholar recognized; one of them was the man with whom Mike had had half a mind to grapple, the thrower-down of the gauntlet; the other one was of the ejected gang. The former caught Scholar's eye in the lamplight.

Cockney, looking over his shoulder a few paces ahead, turned about, pausing in his singing of "Longer fer me!" and came back, craning like a thin duck.

"We were speaking to this gentleman," said one of the men, but not the one who had spoken to Scholar.

"O, you were, were you. Why can't yer speak for yerself?" and Cockney turned to the other, he who had tried to lure Mike into combat. "Wot do you want him for?"

"Yus it is! We're shipmites! I'll give yer a bash in the ear-'ole for tuppence! I'll put yer nose up among yer 'air for ten cents! Won't hi do instead? We're shipmites, 'im and me."

The man lunged at Cockney to deliver a blow; and Cockney, with a wriggle and a snarl, smashed a blow in his assailant's wind, and, next moment, when they grappled, set his teeth in the man's wrist.

"Bull!" somebody shouted, so the farther combat of weasel and boar was not to be seen, for the call of "bull!" was genuine. There he was, there was the policeman pacing slowly towards them like a fate, broad, determined, left hand at side nonchalant, right hand slightly raised, nonchalant too, twirling his club gently at the end of its short leather wristlet—like a stout Georgian dandy, swinging a cane.

None of the "Push" of the S.S. Glory had any desire to see the inside of a lock-up, and evidently the two men who had been curious regarding Mike's whereabouts, were not in league with the police. By the time that his slow patrol brought him to the end of the block, that bull had the pavement to himself; the two "toughs" had disappeared in one of the narrow streets, in one of its narrow entrances; the "Push" was stumbling about over hawsers and round bales on the dark wharf-side. The policeman, turning gently about, gave ear. He heard a thin sound of fiddles, a sound of clapping and table-thumping behind closed windows over at Dutch Ann's dance house; the quick, coughing sound of a donkey-engine somewhere along the docks, and a voice chanting: "Up again!"—pause—"All right! Up again!" Slow puffs of a locomotive drew near, sepulchral cling-clang of the bell; there came a shout of voices: "Yo-ho! Let her go!" a rattle of iron, a rattle of wheels over cobbles; and all through this was a querulous lowing of cattle, puzzled, despondent, irritable, after their week's journey from the long green rolls of Alberta, from lush bottoms of the Milk River.

The Salvation Army people had gone; but away along towards where the masts and the smoke-stack top of the S.S. Glory showed over the wharf, Cockney's voice sang high and piping and exulting: "Longer fer me! Longer fer me!"

CHAPTER IV

Like unto a river in an arid land, like unto a river that dwindles instead of increases, was the "Push" that headed for the Glory . Smoke came, black and oily, into the electric-lighted night from her smoke-stack; the cattle were all on board, but the tugs were not yet alongside. The absence of the tugs sent many of the men back again. Still, there was a sprinkling aboard.

Scholar found his way to the cattlemen's quarters, a large safe of a place under the ringing iron poop, with bunks all round the walls and all over the floor space, the latter ones fixed between iron stanchions that ran from floor to ceiling. The place smelt already of fresh cattle and of beer. Coming down the companionway to it, it seemed that the few who were there were rather dropping an ordinary word into strings of swear-words, than dropping a swear-word into their speech. Men lay here and there, men sat here and there on bunks. Some he recognized as having been at the signing-on; some faces were new to him. Somebody asked him with many oaths who he was, what he wanted; somebody else informed that inquirer that he must be drunk not to recognize the man. One man deplored that the money was all gone, and there could be no more drink; another voice announced that that didn't matter, and need not be brooded over, being beyond mending. Scholar, looking round, noted that on various of the unoccupied bunks there lay some trivial article of apparel—on one a sock, on another a cap, and on another one half of a pair of braces! Somebody fell down the stairs and yelled, and a voice said: "Take that, then!" Men rose upon their elbows and blinked; some rolled to their feet, rolled to the door. There were sounds of wild scrimmage up and down the stairs. Scholar noticed that many men seemed to take all this for granted; even men whom it would be more fair to call "oiled" than drunk merely gave ear and reclined again. The sounds of fighting waxed and waned, ceased, dwindled out, abruptly began again, above—on the stairs. Now and then the combat surged into the cabin, or a fringe of it, other men coming down the stairs evidently taking sides in the original fight. One of them reeled in, holding his head, sat down on a bunk, looked at his knuckles, shook his hand, and blood dropped from it. He had evidently given a blow, and had evidently received one, for his eye rapidly disappeared as the flesh around it puffed.

Scholar felt a sense of relief when the great bulk of Mike appeared in the shadows outside; yet when Mike fairly entered, and was fully revealed in the hard glare of electric light that lit the place, he knew not whether to be relieved or otherwise. Mike seemed to have grown another inch, to have swelled, broadened, two or three; his eyes seemed at once bleared and brightly dancing.

"Put something on your bunk," said Mike. "Something that 'tain't worth nobody's while to steal."

"'Ere yer are—reserved seats!" shouted Cockney, who had been asleep, and now awoke.

Mike looked at a top bunk near the door and climbed on to it. Scholar sat down on a lower one in the middle of the deck. Men came and went. Several ugly pickpocket-faced youths clattered into the cabin, wandered round looking at the bunks and the sleepers.

"Scholar, young feller," he said, "Scholar, young feller—listen to what I'd be tellin' ye. When ye see fellers come in, and when ye hear them say they're sorry they signed on the ship watch your pockuts. They haven't signed on at all. They've only come aboard to see what they can steal."

"Come and have some more, Mike," said the voice above. "She won't sail till four."

"All right, then—watch your pockuts and keep an eye on my bunk. I haven't reserved it. Tell thim it's Montreal Mike's, and he'll burst any man he finds sitting on it."

There was a hailing on deck, a phrase repeated; it drew nearer, came down the stairs, a chorus of: "Not sailing till four!" and a general exodus from the cabin. Scholar stretched out upon his bunk—and repented him that he had invited Mike and the others ashore, starting them upon their jamboree. Nor could he ease himself by thinking that if he had not done so someone else would; not even the thought that sooner or later they would have gone ashore of their own accord, finding that the others had left work, soothed him. The place rang like the inside of a drum as the departing feet clattered over the deck. The volume of sound died, the hammer of heels was intermittent. More men, or youths, such as Mike had warned him of, came down into the cabin and roved, searching, round it. Suddenly a man in one of the mid-deck bunks—a top bunk—sat up and wailed: "Ma valise—gone—pooh!" The half-dozen remaining sleepers awoke, sat up and asked him what he was jabbering about. He waved his arms in a forward gesture, signifying disappearance, flight.

"'E can't talk English! Let me try," said Cockney. "Wen your valise gone, heh? Long time—you sleep? Wen you miss, heh? Wen your valise pooh?" and Cockney very seriously imitated the gesture that signified disappearance.

The Frenchman sat up and stared at him; the other well-meaning drunkards clustered round, waiting the reply to Cockney's question.

"Gee! Can't anybody talk his lingo? Where's that feller Jack—Boston Jack? He can talk it."

"Liverpool Jack you mean—a long, thin feller. Walks like this." The speaker drew up his jacket behind so that it wrinkled round his waist, and canted back his shoulders.

"Yes, I sleep," he replied. "Some time, I know not how long." He put his hand to his watch pocket, then sat bolt upright again. "My watch!" he screamed. "My watch gone! Pooh!" and he waved his hands.

Cockney was now hanging stupidly round one of the stanchions at the foot of the Frenchman's bunk, looking on as might a drunk doctor at a patient.

"Your watch pooh?" he said. "O, isn't that a 'ell of a shame! I once 'ad a watch meself." He slipped down the stanchion as though it were a greasy pole, so far as the top bunk would allow him, and laying his forehead on the back of his hand made a sound as of anguish. The Frenchman's eyes were upon him, staring; he looked at Scholar; he pointed a finger at Cockney's bowed head.

"Dronk? Eh?" he said. But he was not really thinking about Cockney's state. "What I do?" he asked of the rivet-studded ceiling, and answered himself: "Nozing!"

"Never mind, Pierre," he said. "Never mind. You've a shoot of clothes on. What's the matter with them? They're all right!"

Pierre just glanced at this man, and went on to Scholar: "Lettairs—from my vife."

Cockney had recovered sufficiently by this to raise his head and explain to the others, as if translating: "That's his wife! 'E's got a wife! Too bad."

"Police—eh? Non, non! Not leesten. 'Valise gone!' they say. 'You go with cattle? No matter!'"

It struck Scholar that there was much truth in this. One of the men seemed to see it otherwise.

"You go with this fellow, Pierre," he said. "You go police with this fellow. He talkee alla same upper ten. You savvey? You savvey toff in disguise?"

"Toff? Oh, me elbow!" shouted somebody, which seemed an insulting phrase in the society in which they moved. There was an offer, on Scholar's behalf, to paste a face because of it, an acceptance, a scrimmage. "Don't! Don't! Don't!" cried Scholar, and they stopped, drew apart.

"No, no matter. They say," and Pierre waved a hand at the recent fighters and the watchers of the fighters, "even if they leesten—'No good; bottom of the dock!' Hay? No matter!" and he lay back again.

There was a slight movement of the ship that caused the "Push"—those that were left of it—to stagger. Somebody outside said: "We're off! Is the push aboard? Where's Jack? Where's Johnnie? Where's Mike?"

"Mike, is it?" answered a voice. "Here he is. Who is the man that has a valise?" and he appeared in the doorway with a cut across his forehead from the hair to the temple. He was carrying a small suit-case.

"Is it yours? Well, if ye had been an Englishman, or a Scotsman, or an Irishman, or a Bostoner, I would have had to hit ye for havin' a valise, but seein' ye're a Frenchman and all alone like, here's your ruddy trunk!" and he laid it upon the bunk.

"Is it me head?" asked Mike. "So is me fist. I met the spalpeen runnin' down the gangway when I'm runnin' up. 'Where ye goin' wid the trunk?' I says, and he swings it up and hits me over the head wid it, and I knocks his teeth out for him. Whin ye see luggage goin' off a ship after the Blue Peter's up, its a good rule ivery toime to grapple wid the man that's carrying it."

There was a rattle of heels again overhead, a fresh outcry; sounds of another scrimmage came down to them. For a moment it seemed Mike heard a call to battle; then he remembered his dignity.

CHAPTER V

Many of the men fell asleep, Scholar among them, exhausted by the strain of the day and evening. He dreamt that he was back again in a bunkhouse of Michigan, and came half-awake, thinking that the forest was afire, then realised where he was, in this Bedlam, and was crucified upon regret. If only he had not made that offer to stand treat! He moaned; it was an anguish to him, for he had not lived even his brief years without knowing kindliness when he met it; and these fellows, whatever their vocabularies, their moral code, their falls from it, their capacity to live up to it, had treated him kindly. He would like to begin all over again with them, to go back twelve hours in his life and theirs, and stroll towards them feeling the air again for the method of approach, outside the barrier at the end of The Saint Lawrence Shipping and Transport Company's shed. Tortured, he fell asleep again, and the next he knew was the sound of voices. Perhaps all had their dreams, or nightmares when that sound brought them from sleep proper into a state of half awake and half asleep.

"I say 'e's a-sleepin'! Any man as wants to see Scholard 'as got ter tell me wot 'e wants ter see 'im for!"

"You tell me wot you want ter see 'im for, and I'll see if it's worth disturbin' 'im for. I'm his bleedin' secretary, I am."

Scholar came wide awake, and rose upon an elbow, to find a semi-circle of backs turned to him, Cockney's back among them; and Cockney's arm was reaching out and brushing those of his shipmates who stood near, or part brushing, part elbow-plucking, part signing to them in an endeavour to form them up between Scholar's bunk and a man in the doorway. Up sat Scholar. He had seen enough of ugly fighting during the last few hours to feel a yearning for a life, nay, an eternity, of peace; but he was in the pack, and he must not let Cockney take the chances of an encounter on his behalf. As the man in the door—and he, too, had a backing of friends—advanced upon Cockney, Scholar sat up. He had the strong resolution to, as they say out West, "make good" here; and it was a resolution that advertised itself on his face as he rose and swung forward.

"That's hall right. You ain't one of hus. I know 'ow ter deal wiv these fellers. We're shipmites, ain't we?"

"Do you want to speak to me?" said Scholar, looking keenly at the advancing tough.

"Oh! No! They told me a man called Scollard was aboard. I wanted to see a feller called Scollard!" This in a grumbling voice.

"O, yus! This hain't the feller, eh? No! Am hi any use? Would you like to push my face in, eh?"

A voice above shouted: "Come on, mate, come on! She's pushing off!" and the man who wanted to see Scollard hastened away, drawing off his forces in the doorway.

"Thank you very much for that," said Scholar. "Only a man must look after himself of course."

"Yus, that's all right. Good luck! You ain't 'ust one of us; you don't know the ropes—not 'ere, any'ow. Good luck, mate."

He and those others who had power over their legs, climbed to the deck, Scholar accompanying them. The former jogglings must have been merely due to the casting loose of one or two hawsers. A ladder still stretched from ship to wharf. "Come on, come on there. Get ashore!" the bo'sun was shouting at its top. "You fellers had no right aboard here anyhow." The visitors hastened over the side and down the ladder, those of them who saw a policeman at the shed end (looking up with that frowning and sidewise consideration that suggests: "Now I don't know but what I should run you fellows in! You look as if there might be a charge about you!") going down with anxious precipitancy. The last reached the wharf. Two men came up, climbed aboard—the pilot and a ship's officer. The ladder was hauled away, the last hawser was cast loose, and with a tug ahead and a tug astern the S.S. Glory moved from the wharf sideways like a great iron wall drifting away from a great stone one. The space of dirty water between, with pieces of straw, bits of wood, and such flotsam of the docks—a sodden apple or two, and a potato—rapidly widened. The lights alongshore looked pale and insignificant as the dawn spread; those in the low-browed windows of the waterfront saloons that could be espied over the leaden-hued roofs had lost their glare. Men below, those who could stand, feeling sure now that she was off, came on deck to double-shuffle and cluster on the poop, to cheer and scream, to wave their hands shorewards, as though they saw a multitude of friends there waving farewell, though really there were none.

Before the cheering was over a little unpleasantness began between Mike and Michael. In all societies, in all walks of life, there are certain statements that are considered insulting; but statements that in one stratum are considered insulting are, in another, looked upon as merely amusing; in yet another they are unheard, unknown, and so there is no opinion on them. What should a passivist, in any walk of life, do when some neighbour of his paddock discharges at him the supreme term of contempt of that special paddock? They who cheered the dock roofs turning grey in the morning, and the early stevedores, and the few late night-birds, had now something close at hand to attract their attention. Michael and Mike, on the poop now, met for the first time since Mike, in the saloon ashore, had preferred the company of his two friends to that of the "Push." And Michael, extremely fuddled, vaguely remembered that he had some grievance against Mike. Mike leant against a rail that ran athwart the ship, dividing the stretch of upper deck from the stubby semi-circle of poop. His hands were behind him, holding the rail as he leant against it. He had had a short sleep since coming aboard, and his drunkenness was stale. The ale within Michael, on the other hand, had not yet come to the height of its action.

Mike turned his head from surveying the shed roofs, lightly glanced down at Michael, but did not fix him, turned his head the other way.

Mike looked down upon his stubby and sturdy compatriot as a Saint Bernard dog looks down on a snarling Pomeranian between its forepaws.

"You're a liar!" said Michael, which in that stratum of society is no more considered, even by those who are not passivists, as a call for the mailed fist than, in another, is "Pardon me—have you verified that?"

Mike tossed his head with an air of "This man bores me," tossed it to right, and from left breast pocket drew forth a folded bundle of Board of Trade discharges, and held them up.

Mike stretched his head up as does one who wears a tall collar when the collar's edge annoys his neck.

Mike unloosened his right hand from the taffrail that it was again gripping, threw forward his left shoulder, and then, instead of hitting, he wrung his hands, held them high, rubbed the palms together in a kind of anguish, smashed the butt of his right hand into the palm of his left, and "Michael," he said, "you're drunk. Ye'd better go below. Have a sleep, have a sleep."

"I'm not drunk!" cried Michael, and hit, smash upon Mike's breast. And then out of the crowd leapt upon him—Cockney.

"Now, now," said Mike. "See! Pull them apart!" But it was too late; they had grappled.

Now people make laws, and they become the vogue; you are judged by them, willy-nilly. If you cannot box, as boxing is taught in the gymnasium, and find yourself set upon by a boxer, you will be ostracised in some walks of life if you deliver him a kick in the shins; or, should he fall, if you knuckle his wind so that he may lie there long enough for you to beat your retreat from one skilled in the "science," you will be ostracised for that; you must box him according to the rules. But in this walk of life, upon the poop of the S.S. Glory , it is a case of top dog anyhow. Mr. Smithers, on the docks, newly arrived to see the ship clear, put teeth together, looking up, and made the hissing sound through his teeth that a stoic makes when operated on without an anaesthetic. For as the two men reeled to the taffrail, and the onlookers there fell asunder to give them a full field, they were displayed to the one or two persons who looked up from the wharf front, displayed as on a high set stage, Michael with Cockney's head under his left arm, an attitude, by the way, permitted in some gymnasia, taboo in others—for there are "sets" there too. Michael was swinging a right in upon the top of Cockney's head, when suddenly he saw the taffrail and thought it would serve as well, shifted his hold, and with both hands drove Cockney's head, as if it were a turnip, against the middle rail. It was this which caused the first hiss and spasm ashore. It would have finished most men. You could have laid a finger in the indentation that the rail made in Cockney's skull; but as he took the blow, refusing to be stunned, like a tough, wild beast, he screamed, and thrust a thumb upward into Michael's eye, even while Mike, Scholar, Pierre and the Inquisitive One were hauling them asunder. Back went Cockney, flopped on the deck, and held head in hands. There! They were apart. And suddenly, over the taffrail and down the curve of the ship to the tow rope that went to the tug astern, Michael made a kind of scramble and scuttle.

Michael, upon all fours, had caught the tow rope and now swung himself down, shouting: "I've been shanghaied! I won't sail on the Glory !" He spun slightly left and right, clutching the rope, so that those who craned under the bottom rail to try to grab him, and those who looked up from the wharf, had glimpse, time about, of his ghastly face, and the eyeball protruding like the yolk of an egg. One man was now on his belly under the taffrail, stretching to grasp Michael, but he slithered slightly forward on the curve to the hull.

"Somebody hold my legs!" he shouted. It was Scholar. The Inquisitive One promptly sat down upon his feet. Mike had taken off his boots, and was saying, one leg swung over the rail: "Here, some of youse—hold my hand, will yez."

"Look up!" came a voice. It was the Man with the Hat. He had made a slip-noose on the end of a rope. It hissed down and up. On shore Smithers was shouting to the people in the tug astern: "Keep that rope taut!" for the rope to which Michael hung was falling slack. "He'll be down on the screws!" But the noose was now round Michael's waist, and in their rejoicing the "Push" laid hold of the hither end of the rope that the Man with the Hat tossed amongst them, and with a "Yo-ho!" they put as much muscle into hauling the human being aboard as if he had been a stern anchor.

"Easy, easy—for God's sake!" came a quiet voice to rear, a voice that compelled attention because of the very loudness of the others. It was Candlass; and behind him was the captain's steward, who was a good deal more than a first aid man. They secured Michael as he was dragged over the rail, and walked him forward along the narrow passage left between the sheep-pens that crowded the upper deck.

"I'm all right!" said Cockney, standing up. He put up his hand to feel his head, and laid a finger into the impression of the taffrail. Everybody seemed a little more sober after that. The docks receded. Montreal rose up behind them. Sea gulls that had come into port with other ships cried one to another overhead, and came to their poising station above the stern of the S.S. Glory .

CHAPTER VI

Scholar need not indeed have worried, telling himself that he it was who started the pandemonium. Those who had accompanied him were but a few, and sooner or later they would surely have marked the absence of the others and gone ashore to share their pleasures. In the whole "Push" upon the Glory , as she churned slowly down the river, there was hardly a sober man. And virulent, not ecstatic, are the nepenthes offered, to the men who go down to the sea in ships, along the waterfront by the people ashore. Some were still in fighting key; many were in a condition that recalled to whosoever drew near them the adage to let sleeping dogs lie; many were in a kind of mad misery. Perhaps a third showed wounds, as of battle, cuts and bruises. The veering wind about the poop carried mostly swear-words, and these more obscene than blasphemous, to the captain and the pilot on the bridge. The pilot paid no heed; the captain only looked now and then over his shoulder, like one thinking: "Yes, just as usual!" instead of: "That's rather bad." He was held aloft upon the bridge as are spectators in the zoological gardens above the bear pits.

The Man with the Hat, sober and solitary, reclined on a bale of hay to leeward of the smokestack on the upper deck—the sheep deck; its whole length was crowded with sheep in pens, only narrow passage-ways being left between the packed central pens and the narrow pens along the side—these latter being protected from overmuch wind by canvas dodgers. Jack—he who spoke French—and Jack's partner sat laughing and talking alone, telling tales of adventurous lives one to the other, the glitter of those who look upon the wine while it is red still in their eyes, and as they sat nursing their knees, and colloguing, the wind plucked the frayed edges of their pants. Jack pulled his hat down upon his head with a gesture in keeping with that manner of his as of a dandy in his sphere. It is not to be imagined that he had "come down." Men do come down, of course. He was just a hard case, not beyond helping himself to shoes from a shoe-shop door, not beyond looking upon a derelict suburbanite, crossing vacant lots to his home, with unsteady steps, late at night, as a fair prey, if Johnnie was with him. In his walk of life such a way of replenishing the exchequer was considered no more inestimable that in another walk of life is a little sharp practice in business. There they sat, laughing and chatting.

Pierre had drawn apart, elbows on the rail, his shoulders suggesting that he would fain have them hide him from his fellows. He looked at the shores spreading out, onward and onward, as the Glory threshed along and the tugs left her—a shore that Nature, and the inhabitants, make to look much like certain parts of the real and original France. There were the poplar rows, the little belfrys, the little French villages. If his knowledge of English prevented him from understanding all the obscene oaths behind him, so much the better for him and his dream of the Picardy home.

As for the Inquisitive One—he was not, of course, only inquisitive, but was thus introduced to help to distinguish him from others in first telling of the "Push"—he shuffled round among the rest, hands in pockets, jerking left shoulder forward, jerking right shoulder forward, very young, very crass, trying to keep drunk by acting drunk. If a policeman had stepped up to him he would have been sober on the instant. He was always scared of policemen, unlike men like Jack, who were merely alert to them. There were a great many others, many of whom need not be mentioned in detail, because as the voyage went on they were not considered so by Mike, and he was a man worth heeding in his own walk of life. They were just "them" or "youse"; if referred to in the singular they were "him" or "you," with an indicative jerk of a thumb, or pointing of a finger. They did not even rise to nicknames—shrimpy-looking lads who could pick pockets and knew the soup kitchens of all the Atlantic ports.

The sounds of discord ebbed; and now more plaintive than irritable was the lowing of the cattle on the main and lower decks. On the upper deck sheep gave voice here and yonder, though the majority were quiet. It was as if every now and again they thought it over and gave a little bleat of "Why?" Scholar, stealing away from the diminishing group on the poop, easily, not to attract attention, went forward along the upper deck and looked at the faces of these woolly creatures with something like affection, as a man disgusted in the society in which he finds himself will welcome his dog, or a lonely woman the upturned face of a cat.

The day wore on, the lowings increasing, the cursings decreasing. The warm sun helped to stupefy farther the drink-stupefied. They had now the appearance, most of them, that comes to those who have missed sleep through some long and harassing vigil. Taunting smells of food wafted aft from the galley ventilator; but there was none for the cattlemen. They were left alone on the railed-off poop and in the cabin under it, as in a cage and a wild beast pit. The Man with the Hat, lying on his chest, a straw in his mouth, near the smoke-stack, rolled over and pulled his belt up two holes and looked round casually, wondering when something was going to happen; and then there appeared, in the narrow path to starboard between the sheepcots, John Candlass, with his air of reserve; and behind him, lurching, Rafferty, axe in hand.

There was a difference between these two cattle bosses; Candlass had come into the business—no one knows why but Candlass—and Rafferty had mounted in it, and, mounting, he had not discarded the ancient custom known as "tanking up" on the day that the ship clears the wharf. Nominally they were colleagues, but his clear eye and brain made Candlass actually the boss aboard and Rafferty, red-eyed and swollen-faced, was as lieutenant. Smithers, of the Saint Lawrence Shipping and Transport Co., Ltd., wished they might meet more mysteries like Candlass, but such mysteries were scarce, or did not come their way.

Candlass, coming to the poop, poked his head down the companion-way and said sharply: "All cattlemen on deck!" Then he stood back. He seemed to pay hardly any heed to whether they came promptly or leisurely. To Rafferty's mind they did not come quickly enough, so he leapt to the companion-way and asked of the evil-smelling darkness below many insulting questions. His vocabulary put to the blush the vocabularies of all the others. Candlass glanced sideways at him, and, stepping a little more close, in a low voice, that caused Rafferty to come near to hear what was said, engaged him in conversation. Rafferty, drunk or sober, was rather proud of his job; he had climbed to the top, as may the reporter to be editor, the bank clerk to be manager, the stable mucker to be ranch foreman. But Candlass was a celebrated boss, and it was an honour for any other boss to chat with him, or to sail with him. Even Rafferty drunk did not forget that, and Rafferty only three sheets in the wind, as he was at present, was none averse to letting the men come up as they would, when all could see the terms he was on with Candlass. Not that his ways were Candlass's ways; he esteemed Candlass's control, but would not imitate—indeed could not. There was always some intimidating weapon in Rafferty's hand; but Candlass's hands generally lay negligently one within the other behind his back. One may suspect that he felt a slight pity for Rafferty rather than contempt, and would have been sorry to see him do a murder in his cups; looked upon him somewhat as Scholar, coming aft now from the sheep-cotes amidships, looked upon the large, dishevelled Mike who emerged on to the deck, scoop-cap awry on his ruffled hair, eyes puckered to the sunlight after the dusk of the cabin, licking dry lips, working dry tongue, disgustedly grunting "Ach!" over his condition and his stale feeling—referred to by callous topers as "the morning after." Candlass produced a coin and handed it, perhaps by some convention of courtesy, to Rafferty; Rafferty rejected it with a "Go ahead!" and Candlass tossed.

It came down tails. Candlass pointed to Mike, and Mike made four steps of it, with a touch of swagger, to one side. Rafferty pointed to Cockney, who staggered to the other side. Candlass said, very quietly: "All right. You can pick your own men now!" for these were "straw bosses"—Mike under Candlass, Cockney under Rafferty. Neither Cockney nor Mike had a coin left, so Cockney stooped and picked up a splinter of wood, and, laying it between his two palms, held them forth.

"Sharp—blunt!" said Mike, tapping first the fingers then the wrist of the covering hand, which Cockney then lifted. The pointed end of the splinter was toward the fingers, the blunt toward the wrist. Mike looked at Scholar, but at that moment there arrived, from his patching and his sleep amidships under the steward's care, Michael, one eye under a blind, the other riveting an imploring gaze upon Mike.

"I'll have——" snapped Cockney, and out shot his hand and he pointed to Scholar.

"I'm after doin' this," persisted Mike doggedly, "for everybody's sake. I want Scholar meself, but I'm takin' Michael from him, for they've sane enough of each other. He can pick somebody else for Michael, if he's half a man, and then I'll begin afresh with Scholar. Come over here, me lad; ye're picked."

Rafferty, with an evil oath, demanded Scholar, and Cockney, for a moment, had the air of veering round again, then he grinned and was silent. Candlass said something that nobody caught.

"Oh, all right—go ahead!" growled Rafferty. "Let Mike have him, and you take that fellow there with the hat—and that thin fellow with the impudent eyes." This was Jack, who could quelle-heure-est-il.

Mike then picked another; Cockney looked round, and Jack's partner, of his own accord, stepped over beside Jack.

Things went fairly smoothly thereafter, till it came to the last shamed few—at least most of them seemed shamed; only a small number appeared to look upon the lack of desire for them with unmixed levity. Apparently the sign-on had been an even one; two men were left. It was Mike's choice. Suddenly an odd cough drew everybody's attention; and there, foolish behind them, was the youth in the long coat, the spectacles, and the leggings. Mike stared at him.

"Oh, be jabbers! Come here, me lad!" he said. Some laughed; others said: "What the hell are you laughin' at the poor feller for?" Mike stepped forward and put a hand on Four Eyes' shoulder, and an arm out behind the two remaining pick-pockets who stood together, and herded them, all three, like a man driving pigs, herded them across to Cockney's side. Cockney's receding under jaw hung down, his eyes goggled under the bandage he had tied over his forehead, covering the mark of the taffrail.

"I give ye a prisent of them," said Mike. "The three of 'em." Some of his underlings grumbled. He looked slowly round at them. "Whaat?" he asked. "Would ye not prefer to be short-handed than disgraced?"

CHAPTER VII

The two bosses looked at their men, observing how some stood erect, if bleary, but how others swayed and propped themselves against taffrail or neighbour.

"I think," said Candlass, "if you have the bigger bunch, Rafferty, that I've the pull on you for the sober ones."

"Oh, indeed," answered Rafferty. "They'll be sober and sorry before we strike Liverpool." Some of the men flinched, and some showed their teeth in wry smiles; one or two, men of the order of Jack, stuck hand in jacket pocket easily, cast their heads back, and smiled secret smiles at the river.

"Those of you that are sober," said Candlass to his gang, "come forward." And he walked away. He was taken at his word; not all followed. Half-way along the deck he turned and glanced meditatively at those who elected to call themselves drunk, and as he glanced at that little party thus it became aware of him, and was troubled, and one or two more disentangled themselves and followed him. There was a slight puckering upward of his under lip as he considered each of these, and to each he delivered a brief nod, and they knew they were marked men. Rafferty had other ways of doing it.

"Drunk and sober," he said, "get forward!" and shepherded them before him, along the passage-way between the sheep-pens on the other side. One man turned and looked at him insolently; and Rafferty, elbowing ahead, plucked his sleeve, and leaning forward, whispered in his ear, then thrust him along the deck violently.

"I'll tell you what I said to him," said Rafferty, "and to you," he added as if biting the words. And stepping up close he muttered something with a virulent expression. The men crowded forward, growling.

One of them—he who was the subject of Rafferty's second whispered advice—explained: "He said: 'I'll not give you a chanst to make any reports, if that's in your mind. I'll get ye alone between decks, and you'll be having an accident. Somebody will find ye had a severe fall.'"

Cockney, a mere "straw boss," had no scruples. He leapt at the man, both hands at his neck tight, crashed him to the deck and knelt violently in his stomach.

"Talkin' ter me !" he said, coming erect, and the gang moved forward, while he who had fallen sat up, gasping for breath.

"Shake a leg!" ordered Rafferty, behind, and the last men, at sound of that voice, hastened forward, then delayed again, made a jam. It was Jack and Jack's partner who were the cause of that; and it was intentional on their part. Rafferty's eye sighted an end of wire rope. He lifted it and whirled it down upon the back of the last man.

"Me?" And the man who had been called "coward" smashed his fist into Johnnie's face. A fierce fight followed; they reeled to and fro, falling this way and that about the sheep-pens. This was a different matter for Rafferty. He charged upon both.

"Come siperate!" he shouted, but they did not come separate. With the wire rope he flailed them till one relaxed and fell over, moaning, among the sheep. Johnnie turned, belligerent still, but crash on his knuckles came the wire rope, and he was disabled. And on went all again, sullen, and some in pain. Candlass's gang had already disappeared forward and gone down to the main deck.

"I might manage," answered Scholar. "Looks fairly simple, if you show me how. Hate machinery, all the same." He smiled.

The Man in the Hat looked at both so expressionless that Scholar took the lack of expression to signify contempt.

Rafferty's yelling gang came down to the main deck, and passed on, with more friction on the way, to the lower deck. Candlass watched it, head on side, watched it meditatively as it progressed a few yards at a time; had the faintest little snort and a pucker of the corner of his lips, as some particularly insolent one received the wire rope, for Rafferty had now cast aside all technical scruples. Cockney was in his element. Jack swung along, his handsome and evil face sneering—a sneer that Cockney averted his eyes from quickly each time that he encountered it as he played lieutenant to Rafferty. They descended somehow or other into the hold, going down like frogs. Some seemed to be kicked over. Jack's partner, Johnnie, went down the ladder with one hand thrust in his jacket as in a sling. He turned at the ladder and looked at Cockney, who stood there to see all below, went over very self-collectedly, raising his head at Cockney and then at Rafferty, something like a duck after spooning water. Candlass's gang above, looking over, opined each to each that there was going to be a hot time in that half of the "Push." They were already, though they knew it not, under the influence of their mysterious boss. Even their voices were more subdued.

"O!" said Cockney, suddenly. This was to the man in the long coat. He stood aside to let him go down with plenty of space to manage his coat-tails and the buckles of his leggings. Even Rafferty slackened his grip on the wire rope, put a steadying hand on the top of the ladder, and watched the descent with an "Aisy, me lad!" as if me lad was a valuable cow.

There was a hiss of steam, a rattle of cogged wheels; and two hooks at the end of a chain swung down. "Out below!" went the cry above. Somebody below yelled up: "All right! I'll paste you later when I see you!"—"Get on with your work!" roared Rafferty. "I see you sitting there on them bales underneath. Roll them out." Up came the bales, and down anon swung the hooks; up again came the bales. Once the hooks slipped, the bales fell, one nearly on a man. At that Candlass disappeared from the main deck, reappeared presently on the lower deck, went over the hatch-side half-way down the ladder, and stood there looking at the gang below. Rafferty made no objection. "A dirty, drunken crowd," was all he volunteered. "It would sober some of them to have a bale on their head." Candlass climbed up again after exerting his influence by merely being there, and flicking his hands together as he came to the deck, remarked: "They'll all be sober before long, and no excuse." This saying was passed round from one to another. It suggested, as those who knew Candlass of yore agreed, that Candlass had his own point of view, and that only upon a man who had full use of his faculties would he be utterly severe in case of wrong-doing. Those whom he had "marked down" felt troubled in their hearts, as do discovered truants whose names have been handed in to the Head.

"Let me have an axe up," said Candlass presently, on the main deck again, looking down at Rafferty. Rafferty glared round for his axe, forgetting where he had put it, found it, and Candlass, turning to his men, gave a jerk of his head to one of the marked youths, and pointed down at the axe.

Candlass's lips tightened for all reply, and he seemed to read the man's eye. The man hastened away to the deck below, and when he returned with the axe Candlass looked at him again thoughtfully, then pointed to the bales strewn on the deck.

Candlass pointed to the bales again, and the man walked over to them and began to smite upon the wires, which sprang apart.

"Here, the rest of you," said Candlass sharply, "just hustle that hay all along the alleyways."

"That will do," Candlass replied, and then quietly, at least comparatively speaking, and certainly expeditiously, to and fro on the main deck went Candlass's men, carrying the hay. They even began to be jolly at their work, throwing the fodder each to each, and the great horned beasts strained their necks and lowed, horns meeting horns across the alleyways. The men had to arm themselves with sticks to beat back the heads, for the armfuls that were carried to the extreme ends were sorely diminished by snatchings on the way. Candlass remained by the hatch, signing with a hand when to hoist, when to steady, when to let go, for the Man with the Hat worked on at the engine, bringing up bales to Rafferty's deck.

There was a sense of famine in the crew by the time all this work was done. The cattle were fed, but not they. The drink was out of them and there was no food in them, and they went aft to their safe of a cabin and picked, snarlingly, the men who were to go for meat and bread to the galley and the baker. They crowded, still snarling, round the tub containing the tin plates, forks and spoons, and when the food arrived they swooped round it, all talking and yelling. Mike's voice boomed high.

"Yis, youse all sober up for your chewings, but youse can't sober up fer work, some of yez."

"That's so," came Cockney's chirruping shriek. "Them that wasn't workin' jest now shouldn't git anythink ter eat."

"Oh, kickin', kickin'!" said Mike. "You deserve to be given just the Board of Trade Allowance, the way youse are kickin'! Are youse aware that there's more rations there than the Board of Trade grants ye?" He turned to explain to Michael, friendly: "Them fellers whose mothers was rakin' in the ash bucket for a crust would be kickin' if they sat down to ate this day with the captain."

" He gets enough," growled a flat-browed fellow. Mike turned his head slowly and sized up that speaker.

"Well," said he, "I suppose the captain didn't spind his life lying on his back in the parks!" He paused, and nodded his head, to let that soak in, before he added: "So as to get his freezin' job up on the bridge. Do ye begrudge him his pie, damn ye?"

"Pie! Oh pie!" cried one, and there began a great talk about "hand-outs," and "sit-downs," and "throwing the feet,"—slang of American trampdom.

"Well!" said Mike, hearing all that jargon. "I thought it was cattlemen we was. We seem to be a bunch of hoboes, back-door beggars——"

"Front-door!" shouted a sharp, pale-faced little youth. "I always go to the front-door. If it's an old woman what opens I always asks her if she would ask her mother to give something."

Mike glanced at him with the appearance of one who is sick. Michael, cheered up afresh by Mike's recent friendly acknowledgment of his presence, shouted to a man who had flung his empty plate at a rat that ran on one of the pipes: "What are you doing that for? Let the rats alone."

"To keep them friendly. You may throw your arm out of your bunk in your sleep, and if ye're always disturbing the rats they'll lay on to your hand then. But if you pay no attention to them at any time they'll understand it was an accident."

One or two laughed derisively, but they were quickly silenced by others who wagged knowing heads. Michael, thus backed, proceeded to cite cases.

"When I was on the steamship A-Chiles the rats used to come up every meal time and form up behind us clean round the table." There was a laugh. "I'm tellin' ye!" said Michael. "There's no use of me going further if ye don't believe the first of it."

"What else, then?" asked the Inquisitive One. But he was beneath Michael's notice, for Michael wore a blind on his eye and was proud of it by now.

"I was going to tell them," answered Michael, "but I suppose they won't believe me, that the table was short for the number of rats, and they formed up behind us——" he waved a hand behind him as if there were rats there now—"four deep."

There was another laugh, but Mike did not join in. He was staring into a corner, for something there had arrested his gaze. He turned to those near him. He thought he had got used to the freaks on board, but evidently not.

"Can any of youse tell me," he asked quietly, "what's the German Emperor doing on board?"

They looked round. Over in the corner, with a heaped plate and two biscuits, gorging, was a man whose attire would have ousted him from any hotel in Regent Street or Broadway, but who was here a disgrace the other way round—shamelessly well done; a fat, cunning-looking man with lecherous eyes. It was probably his moustache that deluded Mike, for it was a little bit reminiscent, perhaps, of that other celebrated one, so handy for caricaturists.

"It's the night watchman—the night watchman," explained the Inquisitive One, who perhaps had seen him before and instituted inquiries.

"Bejabbers," said Mike, and putting down his empty cup and empty plate, he led an adjournment on deck.

CHAPTER VIII

There was a tensity in the "Push" that night, a sense of expectancy and foreboding, according to how they were constituted who felt it. There were minor squabbles. The lower deck gang had several to settle, and they never seemed to be settled. There was some slight friction in Candlass's gang also over the fact that, thanks to the whim of their straw-boss, they numbered three men less than the lower deck gang. Two of these three that had been made a gift of to Cockney were present when the subject was discussed, and the rising storm over that matter made several wonder where the third was—the youth in the long coat.

"Oh, to hell!" said several, which being interpreted means that they thought he was not worth worrying over.

Mike put his head on one side wondering, trying to remember if Four Eyes had been present in the crowd wrangling for food, but he could not remember, so he dismissed the subject. He was glad the fellow was out of his sight anyhow, and not in his gang. And as for defending himself in his action, which they now discussed, though he opened his mouth once or twice to do so, he desisted on each occasion. "Let them wrangle," his expression seemed to say. Charles, to give the Inquisitive One his name, was agitated; he had set this discussion agoing, and Mike's silence he began to feel as ominous. Mike was well aware that he had started the "grouse" about being three men short, and in an attempt to allay his forebodings, Charles now drew forth his mouth organ, and began to play. Some of the younger fry danced. One or two, who were mouth-organ experts, cocked their ears. They thought they could play every whit as well as the Inquisitive One. His rapid-fire eyes perceived this, and when he finished one tune, and these young men made a grab for the instrument, he leapt back snarling. There were shrieks of "Damn your eyes!" and "Half a mo'!" and "Give me a chance!" and "To hell with you!"

"Half a mo'!" shrieked Charles, and broke into another tune, holding the mouth organ between the flattened palms of his hands, and putting a tremolo into the music by the adroit movement of them. The other would-be players drew back, sat down on their bunks. One of them, when the dancers added shouts to their dancing, growled: "A little less yelling like that. Let us hear the music."

"Who are you talking to?" said another, who had interspersed his dance with many whoops. It was a mistake, for the man who had ordered silence was that devilish, depravedly handsome, dandiacal person called Jack. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and rose. There was an expression at his mouth as of boredom. The youth who had "lipped" him dived out of the cabin. Jack strolled after him. One or two gave ear, listening for what sounds from outside might come through the music within. They made up their minds that nothing had happened, when suddenly there came throttling cries, and they listened anew, listened briefly, and then said: "Oh, to hell!" Jack strolled back again and looked at the two young men who had shown themselves as especial friends of the man he had been chastising out there in his own way. It was a brief but meaningful glance he gave to them; neither had any response. The music went on, with a few interludes after that fashion.

"Yes, very nice," said Mike eventually, gloomily. "Now we're going to sleep. There's a few of youse fellows is going to have a happy day to-morrow."

Some fell silent; others said: "Oh, we'll let them see!" It was growing cold on deck, and one by one the men who had been above came down into the stuffy cabin. The fellow who had "lipped" Jack crept in and retired to his bunk. Mike, backed by Michael and others, belligerently ordered the crew to strip. Several had already done so. They were not too cold; the place was reekingly hot, and for all the tendency of their oaths to be based upon naked matters, nakedness brought forth no giggling comments. The stripped men reclined in all manners of attitudes, carrying on conversations, rising on an elbow to gesticulate, hanging a leg over a bunkside in excitement—but there was none of that, no giggling at each other's nakedness. Now and then Scholar was inclined to smile, but it was a wholly humorous smile; he was thinking of what the people in the walk of life he came from would think if they were present. He was picturing his father reclining on the ottoman at home, rising up on an elbow as he discussed politics or taxation with other friends similarly at ease. Several grimly refused to strip.

"Oh, very well," said Mike. "Only I'm telling ye ye'll be lousy before we reach Liverpool, wearing yer pants day and night."

Jack and Johnnie whispered together, and then went up on deck with the air of young men going out on a "tear" for the evening. They were off to see if they could amuse themselves by discovering the lairs among the hay of one or two who had not come down to the cabin, to tickle the ears of these men with blades of hay, or to pelt them with sheep dung, or to interview their pockets, according to what seemed feasible. One or two others slipped away anon, but did not go on deck, and presently they returned tittering, vaulted into their bunks, and stretched out. There was quiet for a little while, save for the lowing of the cattle and the everlasting churn and beat of the propeller pulsing underfoot. Then came Rafferty's voice from the distance asking somebody, in the name of Saints and Devils, if he could not tie them up himself. The answer was inaudible, even to those who were wide awake, but Rafferty's voice came again:

A titter again exploded from a bunk, a whispered "Shut up!" came from another. In plunged Rafferty, wire rope in hand, and roaring: "Tumble up, the lower deck"! Some of the men woke, thinking it was morning.

"I just tell you fellows right now," he said, "you can confine your letting loose of the steers in the darkness of the night to your own deck, or there'll be some slaughtering done. Mind! Now when I say a thing I mane it!"

The pacific men of the main deck thought to themselves: "Oh, Lord! There'll be a free fight with all that lower deck crowd." The men who had sleepily and subconsciously followed Rafferty came back presently; two divisions of the steers, they reported, had been loosened and were milling.

Jack and Johnnie, after the others were asleep, stole back again, muttering something about "divvy in the morning." The morning came with awful celerity. "Tumble up, you sons of——!" and there was Rafferty in the doorway, wire rope in hand, going from bunk to bunk roaring, and coming down whack on the sleepers. One man sat up and pointed at him before he drew near.

"Now look out, Rafferty!" he warned. "I'm not on your deck. If you touch me I'll have it into you one way or another."

Rafferty glared at him, realised that the man was not on his deck, and passed on. But all were awake now. Scholar, hauling on his clothes, thought to himself: "Now we are going to have an exhibition of discipline at sea!" Then suddenly, in a top bunk amidships, up sat one of the pickpocket-faced youngsters, one of those referred to, in a bunch, as "youse" by Mike. And he piped up: "Call me in another hour, Rafferty, and fetch me me shavin' water."

Rafferty rushed at him, but the skimpy youth slipped to the deck on the far side. The boss pursued, and amid cheers and whoops they ran, like boys at tag, round and round the bunks. They grew winded. The pickpocket-faced kid paused, made feints of coming this way that way, and Rafferty, suddenly, abruptly, fled from the cabin.

"Better get out now, you," somebody said to the youngster, but he delayed, uncertain; and as he delayed there, gaining his breath, Rafferty returned with a pitchfork and charged upon him. A man in a lower bunk thrust out his leg, and Rafferty cannoned over it, dropping the pitchfork; but the wire rope was to hand. It fell from his pocket where he had thrust it on arming himself with the sharper weapon, and he grabbed it and scrambling up whirled back to the bunk of the man who had tripped him, and down came the wire rope again and again.

"Eh?" came a sharp voice, exploding in the doorway, and there was Candlass, white and very grim. "Main deck men, tumble up!" he ordered. Behind him was a middle-sized, square man with a pepsin jaw, slightly bent forward, left foot a little in advance of the right, clenched fists almost touching over his midriff. Candlass became aware of him. "That's all right," he said over his shoulder, in an easy tone, and the pugilistic person, who bunked in Candlass's cabin, and who was on board to bring over a dozen stallions penned amidships near the galley, turned away. The main deck crowd filed out, Mike delaying to watch them go, like a sergeant in command.

Rafferty had his man down still, out of the bunk, on the floor—not the kid who had set the trouble going, but the man who had tripped the Mad Boss up. They were fighting for possession of the wire rope, grappling each other's throats, and it; but at last Rafferty gave up his hold upon the rope. Candlass, motionless, kept an eye upon those who seemed to be drawing on their boots with purpose. Several of the lower deck men thought it safer to go forward than to wait and see the finish here. They began to file out, past Candlass, who let them go, eyeing each carefully, and then glancing back at the bout in progress on the floor. Suddenly his hand shot out and he grabbed the throat of one passing him, instinct telling him that this thin and evil-faced young man was in too great haste. Rafferty rose then, commented: "That will keep you thoughtful for a day or two!" and spun round looking for the originator of this trouble.

"Where's that——" he began. "Oh, that's all right, Candlass; I want to see him. Get out, the rest of ye."

"Get a move on, you fellows," said Candlass. "Shake a leg lively out of that door."

"Don't go, you fellers!" screamed the youngster that Candlass had now relaxed grip upon; he tried to plunge out of the door, but the boss of the main deck had planted himself in the entrance, hands on hips, and an elbow touched either side.

"What are you going to do with him?" said Jack, and there was a slight thickness in his voice, and he canted back his head a little more than usual. His shorter partner struck an attitude much like that adopted by William a few minutes ago, he who had charge of the stallions, when he thought Candlass might require assistance.

"Eh?" snapped Rafferty. He made a movement like one in a weird dance, whirling on his heel, advancing to the door, and he sent the youth who wanted his shaving water off his feet like a skittle well hit, sent him flying the breadth of the cabin, rushed after him, and as he was clutching a bunk stanchion to save a fall, flung his arms round him, bear-hugged him, flung him again, as Jack and Johnnie ran forward, not wholly certain what to do—flung him clear through the door, by the side of which Candlass stood. There was a sound that indicated that the insolent youth's head had hit something hard out there.

Jack and Johnnie, and the dazed man who had tripped Rafferty up, and one or two others who had not yet left, moved toward the door. Those in the lead showed an impulse to pass the Mad Boss with a slight parody of a seaman's roll that might have been taken for insolence. But before they came to where Candlass stood they changed their gait, all save Jack—but his gait was generally swaggering, and even he looked strained as he went out. They passed through the door with a lowering of their heads, somewhat as many people go into church. In the passage outside the perky one, blubbering, rose and shuffled forward with them.

CHAPTER IX

Next morning Scholar was wakened by someone shaking his arm. It seemed that he had fallen asleep, worn out, in the midst of a babel, a mere second before the shake was given, and with a sense of distress he opened his eyes. Candlass bent over him, and in a voice so kindly that there came a lump in the throat of the new-awakened Scholar, he said: "Tumble up, young fellow. Four o'clock."

"Thank you," said Scholar, and was aware of the note in his own voice, a note as of gratitude.

Candlass, moving on, glanced back at him abruptly, and then went on again looking in bunk after bunk, top bunk, lower bunk, and wherever he saw, inert and blank, one of the men of the main deck squad he shook an elbow of the sleeper. Hauling on his boots, sitting on the edge of his bunk, Scholar looked after him, arrested. There could be no mistaking the expression of Candlass's face; it was with pity that he looked into these bunks. He shook gently, and there were grunts. He shook again, and there came a sigh, or an "Oh, hell!" and the eyes opened, and then Candlass, head bent, said: "Tumble up, Jack. Four o'clock!" or "Tumble up, Liverpool!" or Sam, or Dublin, or whatever the name might be. They woke in all sorts of ways. Some woke abruptly, and clenched a hand, prepared for attack; some quailed back and put up a hand to parry; some—great hulking fellows with the faces that we are accustomed to call brutal—looked as if they felt as did Scholar. Candlass, his task over, strolled quietly to the doorway, and his men did not keep him waiting long; they filed out and followed him in the dark tween-decks, where the lamps that hung here and there were beginning to swing, a slight roll being on the ship as she surged out of river into estuary.

The everlasting hum and whirr of the shaft went on below. Now and again one had to shorten a leg abruptly as she gave a roll. There was a new freshness in the draughts of air that scurried between the decks, and many little sounds suggested the open sea—little creakings and chirpings of wood and steel; and outside, in the dark round her, there rose faintly and fell away, a sound as of blown tissue paper. It was black above through the hatches, not yet blue. No stars showed. The atmosphere was fresh and full of little pin points of moisture. A bell struck above, and a bell responded, beat for beat, forward, and from beyond again a high piping voice was heard to declaim (it came with a slightly blown sound): "All's well!" She was forging out to sea. Away aft there was a whoop and shriek of: "Tumble up you sons of——!" There followed yells, cat-calls, loud voices. That incorrigible weasel was at it again. He sat up in his bunk, when the lower deck boss arrived, and—"Call me in another hour, Rafferty," he said, "and bring me me shaving water." He was less a cattleman than what is known in the begging fraternity of the States as a "gunsel." Half-a-dozen of his kidney together will set upon a grown man in a dark lane. Dislike of hitting a kid too hard clings to the man even in the midst of the tussle; but the kids have no qualms. They hang on like rats. It is almost impossible to tell their age. They may be anything from the mid teens to twenty-five, and they remain for many years looking simply neither boy nor man—peek-faced, cunning, slippery.

Rafferty slightly changed his tactics this morning. He stood and looked at the youth. He wagged his head at him.

"My lad," he said, "what I'll do with you is to take you into my berth, over my knee."

"No, you won't!" shouted the youth, and one or two others of the same breed added their voices to his, making a chorus.

"Tumble up, tumble up, damn ye; it's four o'clock!" said Rafferty, and then to the gunsels in general: "If you was a full-sized man and gave me that lip I would paste your face!" and he glared round at the full-sized men.

Cockney gave that horrible jump that made his wide pants flap round his thin shanks. He had always to take people by surprise, so as to have any chance at all. Now he bowled the boy over with a flat blow on the cheek; and, not long since a gunsel himself, and very little patient with them, he leapt at the other two who were standing together waiting to see the fun, and crashed their foreheads together. There seemed less sympathy with them this morning. Harry, the crazy fellow, sat up with tousled hair and gibbered profanity at Rafferty, but Rafferty was nearly as crazy as he.

"Well, you're a grown man!" said he. "Take that!" and with a mighty quick action he flung his hand outside the cabin door, grabbed thence a pitchfork that he had left there on entering, and thrust at Harry with it. Harry put up his hand to protect himself, and the prong jabbed. He rolled over to get out of his bunk upon the other side, being in one of those amidships. The prong jabbed again—with a certain care this time, so that it was possibly not much worse than a pin-prick. He jumped in the way that some pedestrians jump from mad motorists, catching himself behind, and the men gave little laughing grunts.

"Come on, come on!" several growled, and the lower deck squad filed out, Cockney pushing his face close to the faces, one after the other, of the three weasely ones, who might be anything from sixteen to twenty-five. They seemed to understand that, and went quietly forward.

CHAPTER X

Mike had long since sobered, and was now getting better of the dry-mouth and dry-tongue feeling that had followed his drunkenness. He leant with folded arms upon the poop rail and observed how, in the estuary, where the shores rapidly receded one from the other, the lightships were all booming. A ball of steam rose from each, and anon came the shriek. There was something unreal about the whole view. Kind sunlight was upon the deck of the Glory . The precipitous bank, the higher south bank, could be seen clearly, rolling up shining, dew-wet, a glistening green; and yet the sirens kept calling. Suddenly there showed up, some distance off, two pieces of stick, erect, a short and a long one, and then a low mist rolled aside, and the two pieces of stick were disclosed as the mast tops of a schooner. Mike looked at the last lightship, and noticed how only its top was visible. The mist lay low, and in banks. Not for great steamers, like the Glory , standing high, did the sirens roar, but for the little sailing vessels and coasters under the haze. And now, day advancing, that haze began to disappear. Looking over the side he saw the green water quite clear, and something was swimming in it. Elbows on the taffrail, he glanced over his shoulder to see if there was anybody near him who would be interested, but there were only some of the "youse" about, who might reply, if he pointed out to them this otter, that so pleased him: "Well, what about it?"

"Feenish!" came Frenchy's voice, and Pierre strolled past. He too looked over the side, and Mike glanced at him.

"Yes, swim all right," and Pierre pensively watched the otter swimming away sternwards.

"How you getting on down at the galley?" asked Mike, for Pierre had been told off to sit at the galley door peeling potatoes, washing up, and so forth, on behalf of the upper deck. Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

"Who's helping you for the lower deck? Somebody helping you for the lower deck?" asked Mike.

"Not together. One man was come down with me—you know, man with hat——" and he held his hands up some distance out from his head on either side. Mike nodded. "He came down with me first day. Candlass tell me go down. Rafferty tell him. The cook talk rough. He say nozing—he just look. The cook say: 'What the hell you look at me?' and he say to cook—something I don't know. The cook run and get——" Pierre made a motion as of one who chops beef with a cleaver.

"Ze cook run out at zees man, but he did not jump. He stand and look. Ze cook drop his hand and put the knife with handle down."

"What you say? Oh, yes, clever—ver' clever, not afraid. There is nozing more for a little while, then the cook come to the door and he say: 'I have white vife in Liverpool,' and this man——" and again the gesture on either side of the head—"say: 'Come outside.'"

"Black, yes. He say: 'What you mean?' This fellow only say once more: 'Come outside.' The cook stand inside door and say: 'Yah! You someting cattleman!' and zees man heet him."

"He go down bang! And he get up and reach for——" and again he indicated the cleaver. "But zees man with big hat have valise like me. He give it to the baker to keep for him for a shilling——"

"He jump inside baker's cabin, and he say: 'Partner, you give me my valise dam' quick!' He grab it from inside and bring out one revolver. Ze cook run past me and say: 'Where he go?' I say nozing—I am too excite. And zees man——" again he showed the breadth of hat—"there he is, throw down valise, and he say to the cook: 'You drop that,' he say. 'You get in galley.' And he follow the cook, and baker follow him. Ze baker do not like ze cook. All day ze cook shout at him: 'Baker, damn you, ze oven is hot. Baker, damn you, what about your bread? Baker, damn you, I'll put dis dough overboard if you do not come!' And zees man say to cook: 'You dance,' he say. 'You dance, you God-damn nigger! You tell your white vife you menshion about just now, you tell her I make you dance when you go home,' and ze baker laugh—and zen jump back where ze cook not see him laugh, for he is a small man with a cough, and ze cook is very large and ugly."

"He try to dance!" Pierre shook his head. "No, not good. He kneel down, and ze man go away. By and by he look out and he say to me—he shake his fist at me—he say: 'By God, I report that man to Captain!' he say. 'You understand?' I say: 'Yes.' He shake his two fist at me and say again: 'By God, I report that man to Captain!' I say: 'Yes!'"

"Oh, not nice." He waved a hand in one direction. "But up here," he waved a hand in the other direction, "not nice." It was Scylla and Charybdis for Pierre all right.

"No. Anozer man come down. Ze cook say to Meestair Rafferty, when he come past: 'I want anozer man. I give zat ozer man ze sack. He no good.'——"

"Do ye mane to tell me," said Mike, disgusted, "that ye would sit on the one side of a galley door payling spuds, and that sitting forninst ye on the other?"

This was beyond Pierre, but a sudden stampede behind announced that grub was being brought aft.

"So long just now," said Mike, and plunged down after the crowd; and Pierre, who in a menial capacity had helped to prepare this meal, went down again to the galley door from his airing, to take what food the cook would have ready for him. He gathered that Mike had some contempt for his occupation down there, but in so far as the society went, it was—as he had phrased it—not nice there, not nice here. But the quality, as well as the quantity, of the food doled out to him in return for his services at the galley door, was greatly different from that which was scrimmaged for in the cattlemen's cabin, gristly hash and a biscuit, and a tin-cupful of soup. Pierre, down there forward, ate as well as the captain—had mashed potatoes, a little piece of fish, well cooked Irish stew, a hunk of pie; and, if they had paid no heed to the fierce expletives volleyed upon them, the two galley slaves received a cup of coffee later, with: "Here—here's a cup of coffee for you, you poor devils." Pierre and Four Eyes are not the only people who have chosen the fleshpots of Egypt on such terms.

CHAPTER XI

An air of belligerence still hung about the boat, thick as the smell of the cattle. The twelve stallions, ranged amidships, bickered like the men. The alleyway before them was narrow; they could stretch their necks all the way across it, and they were everlastingly doing so—not in the friendly way of the long-horned steers that stretched out merely to draw attention to themselves lest somebody might have food for them, but stretched out crankily, even at their mildest, and at their worst, devilishly. When one did so thrust out its head the ears were always laid back, the teeth showing, the eyes rolled white, glinting round to see what the neighbour was up to. Out would come that neighbour's head like a darting snake, and snap would go the teeth left and right. Out came the next head, and so on along the line—till every horse was snapping left and right save the end ones, that had only to keep alert inwards. Thus were they with each other, and when human beings came along each tried to take a piece out of the passer by; and when he succeeded in running the gauntlet, tried to take a piece out of its neighbour for having wished to share the human being's head.

Most of the men attempted the "Whoa now! Steady boy!" method, not only for their own sakes, but for those who were to handle the horses later. The night watchman used to go past them on hands and knees. Scholar saw him do so once, and immediately gave up his practice of going on to the upper deck, and passing over them so, and descending again; gave up even descending to the lower deck and running the gauntlet of the men there (which was not quite as bad as that of the stallions, for not all were unfriendly) when coming and going. Now, when he had occasion to go forward alone, he always did so by way of the horses, the direct way, and passed them slowly. Each one of them seemed to be possessed of a devil. Cockney had an ear torn off—and the temper of the stallions was not improved thereby. That fellow was a marvel. He got the bandage off the dent of the taffrail on the third day, and that afternoon he had his head bound up afresh because of his torn ear. He expressed no opinion about these stallions, he voiced no threat, not even to the steward who bandaged him, fresh from the accident; but after the steward had done with him, and he had brought the odour of iodoform into our midst and been decently sympathised with, he stole away armed with a cudgel. Those who saw him slip it up under his jacket said nothing. He swung with flapping trousers, a vigorous bag of bones, along the alley where the stallions challenged all comers. Out came the head of stallion one at his approach, and crash went the cudgel on its nose. That brought out the head and neck of the second, brought out the craning necks of all of them; and Cockney flailed his way along the line, flailed up and down, and flailed his way back again, and returned to the cattlemen's den and sat down upon the bunk's edge, with the spreading stain of a fresh hemorrhage upon the bandage. Men looked at the head between those thin hands.

But another man eventually advised him to go back to the steward and have his ear re-dressed. The stallions were not improved by this treatment. It was impossible now to "stay with" any one of them, hanging on to its upper lip and stroking the forehead, whether it would or not, and crooning: "Whoa there! Steady boy!" They raised their heads high, and launched downwards. Later on, Cockney, back again from the doctoring, put his hand to his head and said: "I tell you this 'urts, it does!" suddenly rose and went out again; and once more some men guessed what manner of errand he went upon, but said nothing. William saw him at his flailing this time.

"What are you doing?" he said, charging upon him. "I'd give you the same if you hadn't got enough already."

"Wot for?" asked Cockney, and as he thrust forward his face his eyes danced and blazed feverishly, like the eyes of one at bay, under the white bandage.

"You keep 'em from bitin' off people's 'eads, then. They're your stallions, ain't they?"

Cockney fired one word at William, his eyes as if a lamp was reflected in them. William wrestled inwardly, clenched his hands at his side, and Cockney moved on. William turned back from him, letting the matter rest there in consideration of Cockney's state; but he did not look where he was going, still had a lingering inclination to punch Cockney anyhow, and had his head turned so that Cockney could see that thought in his eye. The end stallion flung its head up and down, with a sidewise swing, loose necked, and William got the blow full on the side of his face and head, and went down.

"Yah!" jeered Cockney, as William dragged himself up on one palm, clapping the flat of his other hand to his temple, and he returned by way of the upper deck (for he was at the far end of the stallion row) with a dancing step, to narrate to those in the cattlemen's quarters what had befallen. And they were quietly satisfied, for William was no favourite. They all remembered how he had come to their door one morning, and stood behind Candlass in the attitude of a prize-fighter being photographed for the posters.

The steers were not like that. Many of the men had pets among them. There was a big fellow on the main deck that won almost all the men over, all those that could be won over by anything. He began his engaging ways about the third day, and kept them up thereafter. As soon as he saw anything on two legs advancing he thrust his head across the alley, holding it a little tilted like a cat that asks to have its neck scratched. After the feeding and watering was over knots would linger there, beside that wise long-horn. The hand was not enough; he preferred the edge of a piece of board rubbed up and down. Seeing how he enjoyed a scratch, various men offered themselves as scratchers to other beasts. You could see the men all along the alley, each with a piece of board, arms going up and down automaton-like, the steers with their heads slowly turning, gratified. And as the men like clock-work figures scratched the beasts' necks, they carried on shouting discussions each to each. But this big fellow who inaugurated the scratching was especially charming. When one side was scratched sufficiently for the time being, he would raise his head up and over, carefully, so that his long horns might not smite his human friend, and then present the other side of the neck for treatment. If the movement was not observed he would turn his head slowly to the side, pushing—none of your swinging blows from him, no suggestion ever of drawing back his head and launching it forward with sharp horn projecting.

The bulls, too, that had been unruly the first day, were now all friendly. If a man happened to lean against their pen, he would be reminded of where he was, not by a prod of a horn, but by a ringed nose nuzzling into the hands held behind.

After the glorious scent of balsam, blown out to us from the south shore, became so thin it was scarcely perceptible amid the smell of beasts, the whoop of the siren, thrilling the decks, on and on, was added to the lowing of the steers and the bleating of sheep. The Glory slowed down slightly and glided into the Newfoundland fog.

CHAPTER XII

Fog reeked and rolled round the ship, and there was a swell on the sea. Under the fog it moved, with knolls and valleys, high and low, regular and apparently everlasting as those rolls and dips of green grazing land from Rocky Mountain House down to the Little Missouri—that country "beyant," whence came the cattle. Ever and again one could see across and along, under the fog, as a man on hands and knees might, lifting a carpet's edge, look along the floor. But even that was a doubtful kind of vision, with shifting and obliterating coils of vapour, so that even if the fog lifted for a yard or two it seemed as if the sea steamed below the lifted fog. The sea's surface seemed covered by a film, and the swell moved under it, a film that the Glory broke as she loomed along, sliding her nose up and down, many feet to the rise, many feet to the drop, advancing all the while. It was before the day of wireless. No messages were coming and going; only her siren complained into the wilderness of fog and water. Forward, the first officer and a couple of seamen took soundings. The ship stopped in a great stillness. Sheep sneezed and coughed; the cattle lowed. Deep down there was a sound of shovelling of coal; then a bell cling-clanged, and once again there broke out a sound as of a "hush," and the whirl and whirl of the shaft with its old refrain.

Feeding and watering being over for the afternoon, the cattlemen clustered in their hot den, that little bit of an iron safe of a place, going up in the air, swinging left and right, full of such sounds as a cane chair makes. Michael, squat and broad, patch on his eye, was telling some experience of his life to somebody; another man drew near to listen and remained; still more clustered round. Twosomes, talking in corners, desisted to listen also.

"Michael!" one of them called. "Wasn't there something about you and stowing away?"

"What's that about?" asked several of the younger men, who wanted to gather as much data as possible on this subject. "Tell us about it, Michael," they besought him.

"I was on the rocks," said Michael. "You see I got down to the docks too late to get the A-Chiles back."

There was a movement of interest, a drawing closer. This was a predicament they understood. There are always cattle to bring eastward from Canadian and U.S. ports to Liverpool or London, and the cattleman may return with his boss on the same ship; but if he loses it there are not cattle-boats plying west across the Atlantic to give him a job again. There is stoking to be done, of course, east and west, but there is some kind of stokers' union; and the cattleman does not know whether he would be welcomed among the stokers. There are always ways of getting across, but the cattleman, or at any rate the young cattleman, needs to be posted up on them.

"Where did you stow away?" asked one of the wizened partners of that youth who morning by morning demanded his shaving water from Rafferty. Michael had already begun his story, and this question, and others discharged from the rear of those clustered near him, slightly offended him.

"As I was saying," said he, "I goes on board, and some of the fellows had left one of the boats afore fixing the tarpaulin down. I gets inside there, and I hears somebody say: 'I see you! I'll get the police to you!'"

The Inquisitive One unconsciously ducked his head into his shoulders, and the edges of his eyes narrowed. The word "police" always affected him like that. Jack took on the expression of someone who does what is called "looking the other way." He became blank.

"But I thought I knew the voice," continued Michael. "I says: 'Is that you, Jim Larson?'"

"So he fastens up the tarpaulin," said he, "and there I stays till we drops Ireland, and I tell ye I was wantin' something to eat. So I puts my hand over the gunwale, and loosens them ropes, and——"

Michael's vocabulary broke down at this, and with a lot of by-thises and by-thats, he gave it to be understood that a bo'sun and a third officer told him that they would clap him in irons, that the skipper ordered him to be swung over the side in a cradle and start in chipping, and that he said he wouldn't go. At this point Michael looked up at the insidious critic.

"Oh, well, indeed," he hurriedly went on, "I did a bit of painting for them, and my friend on board gives me a chance to slip the coppers at Montreal."

"Yes," said somebody, "but wasn't there something about you having a fight with the bo'sun when he took you forward?"

"There was indeed, there was some kind of scrimmage." Michael looked up with his one eye at the man whose expression in listening was different from that of all the other listeners. "You been over with me before, haven't ye?" he asked him.

"Tell us about the scrap you had with the bo'sun going forward!" shouted another.

"No, indeed," Michael declared. "I'll drop that bit out. I've told the story so often that I don't know myself now which is the right way of it and which is the wrong way."

"Oh, indeed, there was a fight all right," he assured them. "But I've told about it different ways. I sometimes wonder myself now if I came off best."

"Indade, of course, of course," Mike spoke, lying stretched upon his top bunk, near the door, head on hand, lenient and understanding. "You got over anyhow, and you didn't get put in the clink, and there's much to be thankful for."

The Inquisitive One looked for a moment as if he would protect his breast pocket; but fighting was getting stale, and so he handed over the instrument, the man who took it wiping it on a dirty sleeve before he plunged into the strains of "Rule Britannia!" As he played there was a movement among those near the door. Candlass was there, but he lingered outside until the air was finished and then—"Feed and water, boys," he said, looking in, and as his men defiled into the passage Rafferty arrived.

"Come on wid youse, lower deck!" he bawled. His men filed out fairly orderly. It was only at the morning call that they were still inclined to be cross-grained.

Affairs were settling down into the routine of the trip. There was, indeed, a spirit of friendliness growing among the "Push." Free of liquor, and of the after effects of liquor, the largeness of heart of many was evident, though perhaps there was something morbid, as well as of kindly interest, in their sympathy that they lavished on little Michael. He had his head turned over it, spent most of his spare time sitting on the edge of his bunk, holding up his head to let them look at his eye under the shade. Cockney and he, if they had not yet made friends exactly, had allowed the matter of their fight on the poop to be as an ancient matter now forgotten. The bad eye might have been the result of an accident for all that was said about Cockney by those who looked at it; indeed Cockney was the only one who seemed to recall the origin of it. He sat apart, looking a little ashamed during these examinations of the injured member; but his shame soon began to give way to jealousy, for had he not a bandage on his head—had he not an interesting ear that might be pried at? Yet, take it by and large, as seamen say, a feeling of amicability came to the ship—that is to say by comparison with the spirit that had inhabited it so far. Had any quietist been spirited aboard upon an Arabian carpet he might well have been excused for stepping hastily on to it again, and most hastily murmuring the incantations that would speed his departure; but for those who had seen the "Push" with the drink in it, or the drink waning in it, the S.S. Glory was now almost on the way to being sacred!

The night-watchman, who slept away most of the day in Rafferty's cabin, was the most objectionable sight on deck. He always appeared at meal times, scooped up more than his share, then strolled about for a little while for a constitutional, but was never spoken to. As the days wore on, however, he spoke to others in a manner horribly blending intimidation and fawning, his great moustache waving. He would plant himself in front of some member of the "Push" and explain that he had come down in the world, that he had a son in the Household Cavalry, six foot three, with a fist that would fell an ox. "If my son was on board," he would say, and glare, and if the glare was returned: "Oh, not that I mean anything," he would add. The cattlemen gossiped infinitely less than do people aboard a passenger ship, but it was inevitable that the watchman should be observed, and to some extent discussed.

"What was he saying to you?" asked Jack of a young man before whom the night-watchman had been peering and glaring and fawning.

"Oh, I don't know—about a son in the army, six foot three, knock the stuffing out of anybody. Says he's been divorced."

"He's a lazy good-for-nothing, that night-watchman," he said. "It's a wonder to me youse fellows on the lower deck don't fix him. These last nights now we haven't had a dacent sleep for him waking Rafferty." He laughed. "I hear Rafferty says to him: 'Don't you waken me,' he says, 'if there are only one or two loose. Waken me if there's more than half-a-dozen.'" Mike paused, and then added: "But there always is half-a-dozen."

"Oh, I know what it is," said Mike. "Some of youse slips out at night and loosens them, so as to get back on Rafferty for treating you the way he does. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face, bringing Rafferty in at twilve, at wan, at two, and at three, roaring like hill for you to tumble up, and wakenin' us all. What was he after saying now, shoving his face at you, me lad, and waving his tusks at you in the wind? Was it about his tall son that has the strong arm?"

"Divorced, is it?" answered Mike. "He must have been married then, so there wouldn't be any truth in what I would be calling his lad to him if he comes along to me talking about him and his strong arm, and hinting what he would be after doing, and him thousands of miles away." His voice growled on. "Did he tell ye what he was divorced for?"

Jack swaggered away smiling, and the night-watchman, arriving then on the poop, came up to him, seeing he was alone.

He was evidently a poor judge of character. Jack strolled slowly past and over his shoulder—"Ask them," he said.

The night watchman glared and bellowed, in the roaring voice of a bar-room bully: "I'm only asking you a simple question."

Jack stopped in his stride, looked again over his shoulder, and smiled queerly. The night-watchman thought it was a pacific smile, and stepped closer.

"I won't have it!" he roared, and thrust his tusked face forward presumably to let Jack see the determination in it.

Jack merely canted himself backwards, hands in pockets, and—"Take your face off me," he said quietly, "or I'll spit in your eye."

"If your son was here," said Jack mockingly. "I know all about him—he's six foot three, isn't he?—I'd pound the stuffing out of him. One of the family is enough to be going on with. If you come chumming round the decks after me any more, I'll come along and stick you in the ribs to-night, when you're down there supposed to be watching. I will. I don't want you to come talking to me. You'll waken up with a knife in you. Now, that'll do!" and he strolled on, leaving the night-watchman with a face of terror, but drawing himself erect, and twisting his moustache.

Jack walked the length of the deck and turned, but stepping a foot to one side so that he walked back, in his slow march, direct upon the night-watchman. As he walked he took his right hand from his pocket, clenched, and walked swinging it. "Get out of the way!" he said. "Shift!" The watchman moved on one side. Jack walked on, wheeled, marked where the night-watchman stood now, and, both hands in pockets again, he trod the deck back like a panther, straight toward him.

"You're doing this on purpose!" boomed the night-watchman, squaring himself again.

"You come around talking to me," he said, "you say any more to me and I'll fix you all right." The night-watchman stepped aside, and when Jack turned at the end of that walk the watchman was scuttling down the companion way like a rabbit into a burrow.

Nobody congratulated Jack in words. He was a dark horse. He was one of themselves, but except with Johnnie he was not a clubable young man. Men like Cockney, men like Mike, never spoke to him, nor he to them. Sometimes, in the morning, after the watering was over, if he met Scholar's eye, he would give his head a little jerk to left and say: "Hallo!" He was of those who, when others talked, could move away and not come back again, and yet be called to account by no one for such contempt. He was of those who, if spoken to, could lean up against the rail, cross-legged, turn and look gently up and down the frame of the questioner, then move away, dumb. Perhaps it was Jack, and his partner Johnnie with his feverish devilry, who were at the bottom of an opinion that began to be current on the lower deck. The lower deck men, it appeared, thought that the main deck men were somewhat lacking in spirit. They managed to pass on their devilish restlessness to one or two on the deck in question, and these, thus affected, had the air of looking for trouble. A handy theme offered, and they fell to grumbling over the fact that they were three men short.

The complaining voices subsided, but there were glances cast at Mike by one or two that were intended to be read as: "Who do you think you are?"

But here the routine interfered. A hail came from forward, and the men on the poop, and the men in the cabin below, had to file away to the afternoon feeding. When the main deck bunch spread out with hay and buckets, Candlass appeared, coming down the narrow alley to see that the men did not overdo the belabouring of those steers near the end where the hay was, great beasts whose main thought was to make a meal off the armfuls of hay that went past them while the steers at the far end looked down the alley and lowed vehemently; to see, also, that the mood of laziness in the men did not triumph over the mood of determination and prevent the steers at the far end from having a fair feed; to see also that all hands had tumbled out. So far he had had no skulkers in his crowd, but he was an experienced cattle boss. He moved along slowly, edging sideways past each hay-laden man. All were busy; he had merely to look on. Then he spoke.

"Tom," he addressed one, "do you know where that fellow with the mouth organ is?"

"Isn't he here, boss?" and the man that Candlass had spoken to looked along the decks as if he expected to see the Inquisitive One somewhere at work. Candlass went slowly up the alleyway. Scholar did not observe his approach until the boss's hand was on his shoulder, and he pushed his armful of hay aside to let Candlass go past, a steer on the side toward which he moved immediately tearing at the bundle.

"Don't know," answered Scholar, and was aware that Candlass peered sharply at him before hailing Mike.

"Yes, yes, I'm the straw boss maybe, but I'd rather work meself than——" and he said no more. Only Scholar, near Candlass, caught the response of: "Oh yes, quite so."

Then the boss went aft; and all the men along the alley, for some reason, turned and looked at his back. Even after he had disappeared they continued to pass the hay without a word, then they looked along the alley again, and coming forward was the Inquisitive One. The mouths of several of the men opened, an upright furrow showed between their brows. What they saw seemed inconceivable, for the Inquisitive One appeared to have shrunk, was deathly white, did not look the same man. Behind him Candlass walked, shoulders a little bent, as one under a burden, lips puckered, and eyes on the deck; and the Inquisitive One fell to work, making a whimpering sound ever and again. He was changed, as a cat that has been dipped in a tub of water, but he never told any of the men what Candlass had done to him. Some asked, who had his gift, or failing, of inquisitiveness; others left it to him to tell if he cared to; but none heard. Probably it was a bear-hug that the Inquisitive One had received, alone in the cattlemen's cabin where he sulked over Mike's contempt for those who objected to working with three men short—for Candlass had arms like steel.

CHAPTER XIII

The crew sober was very different indeed from the crew drunk. Their likes and their dislikes were more explicable now. There were one or two who spoke to nobody and were left alone, such as the Man with the Hat. He had made a nest of hay for himself on the upper deck; nobody knew, nobody cared, what he did when it rained; nobody was curious enough to go along to see how he weathered it when they passed through lashing rain. He had one manner for all men—one attitude—the attitude of a bulkhead. A friendly approach was met by him exactly in the same fashion as an inquisitive approach. As for openly antagonistic approach—none made it. He did not seem to want to know anything about the cattlemen. Even when at work with his half of the gang he was never known to say a word, except once when a man pushed him, and he whirled round upon him and said, low and vindictive, the one word "Quit!" And the man quit. The night-watchman halted beside him once and said "Good evening," but received no reply. He did not take the snub, stood beside the nest of the Man with the Hat, looking up at the voluminous and oily-looking smoke that rushed away from the top of the smoke stack and stretched out like a fallen pillar, diminishing across the sea.

"Well," said the night-watchman, still looking overhead, "it looks as if we might have a dirty night."

Still there was no reply, and the night-watchman, thrusting his hands deep in his coat pockets, fumbling for pipe and matches, looked round at the Man with the Hat, and peered at him from under his cream-coloured eyebrows—then moved on with a little more haste than he usually exhibited, recovered a few paces away, and made pretence that he had only moved off to light his pipe in the lee of one of the sheep-pens. He bent down there in the attitude of a boy at leapfrog, and as he lit his pipe, expending many matches, could only think to himself: "That is a dangerous young man."

Scholar, who had no distaste for the appearance of the Man with the Hat, marching to and fro on the swinging deck later on, enjoying the pillar of smoke rolling out in the deepening purple night, enjoying the wind, enjoying the sweep of the masts that gave the stars, as they came out, an appearance as of rushing up and down the sky, commented, in passing the Man with the Hat: "Bit of wind." No reply! He thought that the wind carried his words away.

"Bit of wind, I say," he repeated. No reply. He thought the man must be deaf, so passed on and took his stand near the stern that tossed high and slid down, every slide being a forward slide, the screws whirling. He was enjoying the motion and the spindrift on his shoulders—for he was only in undervest and trousers—when up came two men of the lower deck squad, and one said to him: "Rough night." He did not feel inclined to talk with them, but, a little sore from what might have been a snub forward (for the Man with the Hat might not be deaf), he put a certain warmth into his nod and smile in response. The two came closer at that. He wondered why it was that so many of these men could not chat without having the appearance of being ready at any moment to lift a hand and smite their interlocutor. They came close and plied him with questions—one a Welshman, the other from the Kingdom of Fife. Somewhat thus went the conversation:

"Then you wasn't stopping there?" this from the Fifer, with a villainous scowl, as if Scholar had been trying to deceive. "You was in the States?"

Instead of giving them County and State as reply, he answered now with the bald: "Yes."

There came into Scholar's mind a brief conversation he had overheard earlier in the day. One man had told a story of something he had seen "when I was in Florida."—"What were you doing in Florida?" the Inquisitive One had asked after the story was told.—"Eh?" had said the man who had been in Florida, with a note of warning.—"I asked you what you were doing in Florida?" the Inquisitive One had returned, with a showing of the teeth.—"Ask my elbow!" had been all the answer to that, spoken as if each word was a knife-thrust. Scholar felt himself out of his sphere. He had no practice in saying: "Ask my elbow!" in that tone, or in any tone; and it seemed to him the requisite reply now. As he paused, wondering how to fob off these two catechists, the Fifer said, with a curl of his lip: "You're getting it now, then."

Scholar's eyelids came slightly together. He wished he knew how to act in this society, found himself squaring his chest a little, found that his jaw was tightening. At this juncture Mike appeared on deck, hitched his belt, came rolling along towards them, drew up alongside and yawned loudly, stretching himself, raising his elbows in the air, and clasping his hands behind his head. Then, leaning forward between the two catechists, he spat out into the flying scud, turned his big back on them, hitched his belt again, and said to Scholar: "Bejabbers, it's cold! Let's have a quarter-deck walk, Scholar."

Scholar fell in step with him. At the end of their walk, when they turned, he was aware, without looking too keenly, that the two men of inquisitorial mind were feeling highly vindictive; but the end of their return walk bringing them again close to these two, Mike took a brief farther step to the taffrail, swinging back largely.

Mike gave a "Huh!" of disgust. They wheeled, and began the return balancing walk to the poop just in time to see "them two" going down the companion-way. Mike brought up against the taffrail at the end of their march this time, and leaning back on it, said he: "I tell you what it is, Scholar. Them fellers think they're better than us cattlemen. They're tradesmen. I've seen enough—I don't need to listen to all they're saying, after what you tell me. They're tradesmen; indade, I expect they're ruddy plumbers. They've spotted you, you see. They're thinking to themselves: 'Here's a fellow on board here, and in the Ould Counthry we'd be putting gas pipes in his father's house, and he's down now, and we'll kick him.' Just the same way they would try to kick us too, if they didn't think we was down already, beyant the likes of them to kick," he added in a grim tone, "if they didn't know that we knew how to fix them. If they come prying at ye again, Scholar—listen now to what I'm tellin' ye: Turn yourself around sideways to them, and says you to them, says you: 'Ask me elbow!' says you. And if they shoves their face up against you, says you: 'I'll spit in your eye if you shove your face at me like that!' And hit, Scholar, hit! It's different with the likes of us. You came in among us like a man; anybody could see you wasn't accustomed to us. Now you know what I mean—you understand?" said Mike, for he felt there was more in his mind than he could express. "I would rather go on a boat with you, Scholar, than with thim, if it was a case of taking to the boats; and if it was a row on the waterfronts I'd rather have you with your back to the wall with me than them plumbers. You was born different, and you don't understand thim—ye see what I mane," and he waved his hand. "But you would niver roll a shipmate; and if it came to the bit, I can see it in your eye, Scholar, you'd hang on like a bulldog."

Scholar felt a great friendliness in his heart to this man, though he feared he could not quickly learn the lesson, and would have to think out some method of his own. The "spit in your eye" method of address was foreign to him as yet. Mike had been shouting towards the end, for the wind was rising; but now he paused a spell, and his gaze roved round the night and its stars. He drew a deep breath and returned to matters mundane.

"That watchman will have to keep his eyes open to-night," he said. "He's another of them." He frowned, looking along the decks forward. "I wonder if that feller wi' the big hat is along there yet—like a dead burrd in a nest. He's blamed unsociable, that feller in the big hat," he commented. And then: "Oh, I don't blame him if he wants to be that way."

"Him! No, it's different with him. I said: 'Good evening mate,' to him the other night there, and he pays no attintion. And I looks at him, and he gives me the look—you know what I mane; so I says to him, says I: 'All right, shipmate,' I says. 'All right, if that's the way of it. I know now, anyhow,' says I to him, says I. He's a great lad, ye know. I was hearing about a bit of a spar him and the cook had." He considered the darkened deck. "Yes, he could fix them two plumbers all right that was asking you questions."

"Oh, I'd rather have you than him any day, all the same," said Mike, as if in response to a spoken regret at inability to learn the ways of the society on board. "I think I'll turn in now. Remember what I was telling ye about them gas-fitters."

Mike rattled down the companion-way, but Scholar remained on deck. A faint sound of voices came from below, now and then a laugh. The decks throbbed with the everlasting engine; a hissing and a scudding went along the weather side; a sheep snuffled and bleated; a little while ago fresh lashings had been put round their pens, tarpaulin dodgers protecting the tops. There seemed to be nobody about; here and there a lozenge of golden light, of deck lights, showed. The night was fallen almost as dark as the smoke from the smoke-stack. The Glory tossed and slid, tossed and slid onward; spray rattled with a sound like handfuls of shot on the tops of the sheep-protecting tarpaulins. From forward the sea's assaults began to sound more loudly, with many a resonant clap, and then the rattling as of grape shot followed. Scholar thought he would go below, among his fellows. Friendliness was very dear to him. It was only prying and worming into him that ever caused his jaw to tighten, his eyes to narrow, as he wondered what the stage directions might be.

CHAPTER XIV

When Scholar descended out of the tearing night he choked like an asthmatical man. It was not now a smell as of fresh cattle that filled the cattlemen's safe, called cabin; it was a suffocating smell as of ammonia. Somebody was singing in the cabin that rose and fell with steely and wooden screams, and with whispers of the sea running round it, the tremendous sea that swirled and broke and sprayed on the other side of the thin iron plates. The tobacco smoke was perhaps not quite so thick to-night, for tobacco was growing scarce; but there were still plenty of pipes a-going for blue clouds to temper the callous glare of the electric light.

Scholar slipped into the cabin, feeling for a moment almost shy. He had learned how to come into the cabin when it was a kind of bedlam; but to come into it now, and find it a kind of temperance sing-song hall for poor seamen, with several of the poor seamen glancing at him in a way that suggested their thought was: "Ah! we'll ask him to sing next!" was a little upsetting. He tried to efface himself in his bunk. The applause following a heartrending solo about "For the flag he gave his young life!" had just ended.

Charles looked bashful; it was one thing to play the mouth organ on the dock front while the others double-shuffled (or, for that matter, to play it on an ordinary evening when the ordinary life was going on, some listening, others talking, voices roaring: "You're a liar!" others bellowing: "Shut up!") but quite another to have everybody quiet even before he began to play. Charles screamed that he was "fed up with the thing!" and very likely felt a qualm in his heart so soon as the words left his lips, for he was not at all "fed up" with his mouth organ; he was very keen on it.

Many coaxed him, and one-eyed Michael said: "Well, never mind if you don't want to play. Don't worry the young fellow if he doesn't feel inclined. Jimmy there will play."

Jimmy had been shouting: "Go on, Charlie!" For a moment he was like a sailing ship taken aback, but he plucked up courage, and accepting the instrument that Charles handed to him, wiped it with his sleeve and began to play. Some rose and tried to dance, but did not find dancing easy, for the gale was rising, and the stern rose and swung and fell and leapt up. They danced, collided, and fell, danced again, and the onlookers whooped with amusement, or smiled with mild disdain and pity; and the mouth organ warbled, while the sea echoed and whispered round. Candlass, appearing unexpectedly with a lamp, brought the man with the mouth organ to a stop, and the dancers reeled to their bunks, where they sat down laughing.

"Mike!" said Candlass. "Oh, you're there, Mike. Bring two or three of the men forward with you."

Mike slipped over his bunk side; three or four others rolled out of their own accord, the Inquisitive One among them, for though it must be a call to work of some kind, and he was not eager for extra work, he simply must know what was afoot.

"That will do," said Candlass. "I just want you to come along here and see to some of these ropes before you turn in."

Away they went along the reeking decks. The cattle were not in a bad plight at all; they had their four legs to stand upon, and propped each other as well. It was those upon the lee side that gave most concern to Candlass now. He carried the lamp high, casting weird shadows, and directing the men in the slacking of a rope here, the hauling up of one yonder. There was no doubt that the gale was rising; sailors were battening down a hatch overhead, and their voices, as they hailed each other before they got the whole hatch covered, shutting out the night, came down broken and blown. Seas came over the decks, smacking like the flat of a great hand, and rushed past. Now that the hatches were battened down there was a kind of confined feeling—the long deck above, and the steer-packed deck below, converged in the perspective, and gave a feeling as of being buried alive in a monstrous box full of a dance of weird lights and shadows.

Their work over, Candlass said: "That'll do, men. I'd better have a man or two up to-night, along with the watchman."

Away they went along the choking decks, one or another pausing now and then to scratch, with closed fists—fingers being useless to the big beasts—some head that thrust forward inviting. Others, when a head leant out determinedly, smote at it to make way—but most, by this time, had desisted from such methods, and were more inclined to make friends with the steers. They met Rafferty as they were on their way back.

"Oh, he's behind, is he? Are you fellows going to have another man or two up with the watchman?"

"I was just talking about it," came Candlass's voice, he walking aft in the rear; "but I guess I'll stop up myself."

They passed on to the cabin, Candlass following to thrust his head in and look sharply till silence fell.

All were soon asleep; but, as it happened, there was no night call. On a night like this, even if the bosses had not been about on the decks, the little trick of loosening some steers in distaste for the night-watchman or for Rafferty would have been allowed to lapse. All slept, or at least all were silent; for perhaps here and there, in a bunk, someone lay staring at the electric lights that were never put out, and could not be put out, there being no switch in the cabin, lay staring and wondering at the whole business, the deep breathing, the occasional sighs, the place ringing to the blows of the sea, and echoing, as though someone whispered to the sweep of the spray without; the whirl of the driving propeller going on and on, as if for ever, under foot.

They thought at first, when they were called, that it was a night call, woke gasping in the reek of ammonia, to find Candlass going his rounds along a sloping deck, the Glory now having a tremendous list on, never swinging up to a level, but rolling all the time from the degrees of that list to a slope comparable with that of a church steeple, an almost anxious slope, then back up again, and pitching, too. The men who were already wakened began to shout: "Tumble up! Tumble up!" even before Rafferty appeared; and there was little need for him to raise his cry, for almost all were awake and rolling from their bunks as he lurched in at the door and glared round. The wind shrieked outside, the cabin echoed more than ever like a steel drum, the screams and groanings were infinitely louder. Candlass looked at his men to see what fettle they were in, but he had already arrived at an opinion and a computation regarding what men could be relied on in the event of emergency.

Scholar followed, Michael came next. It was very dark. They went along on the windward side. All the cattle there had their broad fronts against the making-fast board, their heads over it. The men moved along, propped against the hoardings to leeward. The cattle on that side were standing well back, leaning against each other, tails against the backboards. As they manoeuvred forward a faint glow showed to starboard, which had nothing to do with the scattered lamps that, from the beams above, swung round and round in circles. One hatch (and only one) was still uncovered, and down that the shrieking and roaring song of the gale came. Mike poised along ahead like one walking on a steep roof. Up soared the Glory , and down she plunged, and over she rolled—farther over, trembling down. The cattle staggered; there was a sound of clicking horns, there were sounds of things going slide and crash all over, and still she rolled. She had a list on her beyond anything that Mike had ever known. He hung on with his right hand; he was under the hatch now, Scholar a pace or two behind, and both could look up at the dark sky overhead showing purple before the beginning of another day. It was then four o'clock. And as she hung over thus they watched the stars rush wildly up the sky like soaring rockets, up and over, and then up came the sea, following the soaring stars. It gave them pause. So far over did she hang that, from where they held tight upon the windward side, they could see clean through the hatch above, and over its lee edge, right out to the junction of sky and sea (a strip of awesome whiteness, or less whiteness than the colourless look of a glass of water) beyond an unforgettable tremendous tossing waste of a deep and velvety purple. And still she hung over, so that they saw more and more of the sea. It seemed to be rushing at them with all its great dark purple hollows, its purple hillsides, its snowy crests. And in that moment Scholar averted his eyes from it and looked toward Mike, and found Mike—hanging on—looking over his shoulder rearward. Their eyes met. And Scholar believed that perhaps Mike was right in his view of him that he had voiced the day before when the gale was rising—believed that when it came to the "bit" he would not be found wanting.

It seemed to be rushing at them with all its dark purple
hollows, its purple hillsides, its snowy crests.

Then the stars that had rushed up came rushing down again, bringing the sky with them, and it fitted over in place. The Glory rolled and pitched onward, still with something of a list, but no following roll sent her so far over, and from no succeeding roll was she so slow to rise again.

CHAPTER XV

A few of the pickpocket-faced ones hung back during the gale that morning, crawled into corners, effacing themselves, like sick cats. At the afternoon feeding and watering (despite the words of contempt, glances of contempt, and, worst of all, silences of contempt, bestowed upon them when they showed face at their own feeding-time) several did not turn out, pretended to do so—perhaps tried to do so—but slunk back to the cabin. When Rafferty, missing them, came aft to hunt them forth, they showed their peeked faces to him, worn and scared; and he despised them and left them, turned back to his working majority again and shouted through the shouting of the storm overhead, and the rushing of the draught along his deck: "There's some chickens, some chickens!" His men knew to whom he referred, looked at him—and sneered, and laughed, and tossed their heads in agreement; Jack even, whose attitude to Rafferty so far had been one of watchfulness, gave a kind of loud mutter of: "We don't want them with us, messing about here." Cockney too, energetic straw-boss, looked on them as did Rafferty.

Only two of the main deck men were perturbed beyond labour by the steadily increasing violence of the gale, scared by the consideration that it had begun to blow last night, and had been getting worse and worse ever since.

"Two men short!" commented Candlass in the afternoon, and went aft to the cabin to look for them, found one on the way, behind a bale of hay, peered at him as if wondering what he was doing there, balancing carefully with loose knees, taking hand from pocket only to grab and hang on by a protruding end of barricade. He eyed him as a man may eye a newly-bought puppy that has gone in between the sofa's end and the wall. The youth got up, scrambled out as best he could, hauled himself to his feet. Candlass spoke never a word, but bowed to him in the attitude of one listening for a whisper, mock-commiserating, and the youth dragged himself forward to find that his fellows did not want him, had fallen to work passing the hay themselves, and were inclined to treat him as if he was in the way. He had the air as of pleading to be allowed to do something. Candlass, meanwhile, walked on into the cabin, zig-zagged across, looking for his other missing man.

There were two of the lower deck hobbledehoys there. He waggled a thumb at the door, and they got up and crawled out, but he did not follow them; he went up on deck instead, to hunt out the man who was missing from his own deck in particular. The sheep sniffled and bleated occasionally under securely-lashed dodgers that now covered the tops of all the pens. They saw his feet and thrust out their black faces, wrinkled their noses, shivered and withdrew. It was near their feed time. (Mike and Cockney, with two or three others, saw to them daily on their way back, after having tended the cattle.) Candlass tilted his body along, looking left and right to see where his man might be hiding, the ship ever and again pausing in the midst of a rise, pausing much as men on deck did at a more violent and unexpected roll and kick. Some greater wave, at such times, had caught her fair, and smashing upon her hull as on a cliff, raced whirling along the length of her, shot up her side, soared thinly there beyond the bulwark, to be immediately blown wide, as is the top of a fountain in the wind, scudding and rattling along the decks. Tarpaulins had been rigged entirely across her, below the bridge, to protect the sheep on the after deck; and as far as to that barrier did Candlass now strut, tilting and balancing. And there, in a space between two sheep-pens, beside a ventilator, he saw a pair of boot-soles, bent down and grabbed at the legs beyond them, and the face of the missing man looked up at him—green. It was sea-sickness. Candlass stooped low.

"You lie on your back when you ain't actually being sick," Candlass roared into his ear. "Savvey?"

Again the man tried to nod and at least succeeded in making his head go up and down instead of being powerless to keep it from doing aught but rolling left and right.

"Don't fall overboard," Candlass counselled again, and lurched away, muttering to himself: "Sick all right."

But most of the men enjoyed the gale. It was something doing. And when, next morning, the pickpocket-faced youth sat up ready to give his shout of: "Call me in another hour, Rafferty, and bring me me shaving water," his voice failed. He looked round the cabin; he had been one of the shirkers yesterday.

"That's right," said one of the men. "You keep your mouth shut this morning!" And the gunsel and his special cronies kept quiet, for it was unfitting that those who skulked in a corner during a gale should cheek Rafferty the morning after merely because they found that the swing and sweep of the tossing stern were back a little more to the normal. The gale had indeed blown itself out, or nearly so. It was a tremendous morning in the North Atlantic. A fountain of gold, preceding sunrise, shot up eastwards. A sound of hissing and of breaking foam was round the ship, and echoed in every corner. The waves soared, great and curving, blue and purple, veined like marble in their forward curves with the foam of other broken waves, soared higher, curled their tops, broke, and as they broke the wind took the foam and whirled it broadcast. There was a wonderful purple and blue and windy hilarity over that great expanse, so high a sea running that even the horizon line was ragged.

The grub that day seemed painfully scanty. The uneaten shares of the one or two seasick men made no difference, so great were the appetites of the fit. Cockney admitted, after the meal was over, that he sympathised with those persons who chummed with, or intimidated, Pierre and Four Eyes, for the sake of what food they might smuggle away from the galley—though his phrasing of this comprehension was of course all his own.

"'Aven't you seen 'em?" said Cockney. "'O, Frenchy, bring hus along some pie!'" he cried out in a fleering voice.

"I quite belave it," said Mike. "I see some of 'em cadgin' tobacco. There's men aboard this ship I know I wouldn't prisint me plug of tobacco to. If they took a bite out of it you'd be thinkin' the plug was in their mouth, and the chaw they axed for was the piece they gave back to ye." There was an attempt at a laugh, an obvious attempt, for the shot had gone home. "'Have ye got a piece of chewing on ye?'" mocked Mike. "'Me pipe's empty, have you a fill about ye?'—'Have ye a ceegareet about ye?'" He paused. "'After you wid the ceegareet!'" he mocked.

And he lived up to his opinion. There are people who arrange their moral code according to what they can do and cannot do. There are people to whom a fall from fealty to their code is occasion for renouncing and deriding that code. Mike was not of these. He disliked cadging, but had his love of a smoke or a chew driven him to cadge he would not have relinquished his opinion; he would have smoked and chewed as a defeated man.

All day now there was sign of better weather. Even the wind aided to calm the seas, swinging round a point or two and besoming the wave-tops, flattening them. There was hash and pea-soup that day—the pea-soup drunk in the tin mugs, of course, along with, or after, the hash—and the "Push" were glad of it. It was a great tonic day. By night all the clouds seemed to have been blown away; stars by the billion filled the vault; the Milky Way was like a whirl of triumph, like a gesture of joy across the heavens. The wake of the tiny little Glory (she seemed tiny now) was as an imitation of that Milky Way, full of balls, large and small, and smaller, down to the size of sparks even, of phosphorus—dancing and bursting and thinning out. Mike, coming on deck a trifle disgusted by a surfeit of what he called "soup-kitchen palaver" that was in progress amid a group of "youse," looked down at that wake, moody, and furrowed, that kind of half-broken look upon his face, like a wondering beast, a puzzled beast. He stood there at the stern, lifted high and brought low, till his back went cold.

"Bejabbers, it's all very strange," he said to himself; and being cold he looked round for shelter. Some wisps of hay, blown from windward, had been brought up against the lee rail, and he gathered them together. The sheep bleated.

"I'm using this for me own comfort," he said, addressing the sheep in the end cote; "go to sleep!" And he squatted down with his back against the cotes, and stretched out his legs—sat there a long time while the ship pulsed and pulsed on, tossing her stern and the engines racing and steadied, racing and steadied, as she slid through the sea, churning the water into foam, in which whirls of gold began like nebulas of stars, whirled into complete little globes, danced away as entrancing as opals, and then suddenly went out.

Now it happened that, below, Scholar felt he might almost suffocate, and remembering that he had been some time out of the weather, for which he had always a great friendliness, never liking to be too long out of touch with it—blow high, blow low, rain, mist or sunshine—he too came on deck. The poop companion-way had been closed these last few days, and that made the cabin all the more asphyxiating. He came up that narrow staircase, feet clattering on the worn brass edges, turned the handle; eddies of wind did the rest. He wrestled a spell with the door, then came on deck, closed the door, and looked up in awe at all these stars—stood there balancing, now drawn away from them down and down, next moment soaring and swinging up with a sensation as if he might be swung on and come up through that golden dust and see some explanation. Then down he was borne again, or felt as though his body was borne down and his spirit left up there. Explanation, or no explanation, it was good—all good, the crying of the sea, the whistle and shriek of the wind in the cordage, the feel of the wind, the scud of the spray—good!

He turned and looked forward. There seemed to be not a soul on deck. It was as if he had dropped from a star, forgetting all about it on the way, and had alighted gently upon this thing that, reeking volcano-like, tossed and swung, but always forward through the night. He had almost to take it on faith that there was a man in that hardly-discernible little barrel on the foremast, the summit of which raked from left to right. He peered up at the bridge. Yes, something moved there from port to starboard and back again, like a mouse running to and fro on a shelf. Below his feet the ceaseless whirl and whirl went on. A man suddenly appeared, jumping up on top of the sheep pens, tapping with his toe before him, then stepping, to be sure he stood on firm board top and not on tarpaulin cover, turned the top of a ventilator, disappeared, bobbed up again, revealed against the starry sky, or at any rate revealed from his head down to about his knees, the wind pluck-pluck-plucking at his short jacket. He disappeared again, jumping down and was gone. Scholar moved to one side, kicked something soft, looked down and said: "Oh, I beg your pardon!" and a coarse Irish voice answered: "All right, Scholar."

"I seen ye against the stars, but ye couldn't see me. Bring yourself to an anchor here beside me—I have some straw here—and give us your crack."

Scholar, peering down, was now able to make out where Mike reclined, and sat down beside him, back against the end of the last sheep-pen. But they did not speak at once. Scholar felt in his pocket for pipe and tobacco, and held the tobacco-bag to Mike.

Out went Mike's hand, then abruptly back again; and this time he thrust both hands deep in pockets.

Scholar wondered if he had given some offence. Ignorant of how to repel in this society in which he found himself, he might also, even in sitting down in response to Mike's invitation, ignorantly have transgressed some usage of courtesy in this sphere. Next moment Mike explained.

"When I see the way the fellers on this ship go cadgin' for tobacco it gives me a pain." He shifted his position slightly, as if he really felt a physical pain. "I would think shame to keep on axing a man day after day— many times a day—'Have you got any chewing? Have you got any smoking?'"

"Yes, yes, I know; but I said to meself: 'Thim fellers has no daycency. I'll do without chewings and smokings until I get to Liverpool.' No, Scholar, thank you kindly—I'll go wanting it. It has too much hold upon me as it is."

CHAPTER XVI

Now there began to be signs of how the cattlemen would wander off together when they came to land again. Understandings seemed to be arrived at between threes and fours and half-dozens. It was not exactly cliquishness—it was more a case of "birds of a feather"—No, that simile is bad, as are most ready-made proverbs. Not their outward parts, their mere feathers, but their inner parts arranged the groupings. The snarling was all over; drink, and the effects of drink, were old stories. One or two men, of course, were still left alone by all, men so different as the Man with the Hat and the Man with the Specs. Frenchy, or Pierre, his tobacco nearly done, and his complaisance in giving it away in a like state, was now discarded by some of the former spongers, but not by all. Probably those who had been interested in him, as well as sponging upon him, were the ones who now besought him to sing a French song, or to tell them what France looked like.

The feeding and watering were by this time matters of routine, wakening at four a habit. The cabin was almost tenantless, only the cold-blooded, or those children of the slums who felt out of their element unless they slept in rancid air, turned in there. Among the diminishing hay near the hatches—all open again—or on the upper deck, around the smoke-stack, and between the sheep-pens, most of the men slept, snatching a nap during the day when the cattle did not call them, sleeping there at night until only the extreme cold drove them down, with short gasps, from the windy deck to the asthmatical cabin. It was, indeed, easier to tolerate the cabin by day than by late night, for by day, and early in the morning, there was some tobacco smoke—not much now, to be sure—and the companion was open. At night the tobacco smoke soon ceased to combat with the ammonia fumes as the men slept, and some of the cold-blooded were sure to mount up and shut the companion-door before turning in, making the cabin's atmosphere more stifling still.

They began to talk of reaching Liverpool, of what they would do there, to ask each other: "You coming back on her?" Cockney and Michael exchanged friendly speech again. It is doubtful which started, but they were again conversing. The Inquisitive One begged Frenchy to "come with us," indicating the group round him; but Pierre explained that he was going home. One told another about the loss of Frenchy's valise, and Mike's recovery of it, as he might tell of the incident on another ship one day if Frenchmen, or valises, were mentioned. Many of the men fell to rubbing their chins, and announcing that they would be the better of a shave. They asked each other: "Have you a razor?" Frenchy taking warning by the cadging of tobacco that left him smokeless now, pretended that he didn't know what "razor" meant, was unusually dense to signs, could not be got to understand of what they talked. Somebody commented that he must have a shave, that they all should shave, looked too tough, that the day after to-morrow, perhaps, they would be in Liverpool, and if they went ashore like this they'd be taken for cadgers by everybody.

Scholar took pity on them. He had managed to shave twice already, despite the sea running. Now he offered the loan of his razor to one man; and many others asked to be next. Some of them sneered, both at the razor and at those who wished to use it. At any rate Scholar, carefully propped, had his shave; and others—each using his razor, each handing the razor back to him when finished. Thus, at least, they acted to begin with.

"I wonder," said Mike, approaching him, "if ye would lend me the loan of your razor, Scholar, if it's not too much to be asking ye."

"Certainly," answered Scholar, and Mike had his shave, then gave the razor back. Another man had it, and thereafter there was no more talk of the razor for an hour or two, when suddenly several were asking where it was, and it was impossible to tell who had it. Mike was greatly upset.

"I don't like it at all," he said, "not at all. Here's Scholar being kind to youse, and there's some of you fellers can't see anything without putting it in your pockut."

He looked round the crowd. Harry of the mad eyes sat humped, nursing his knees, and smiling in front of him. Jack was smiling too, a cynical smile it might be, however. Johnnie, over his shoulder, asked them to shut up about that razor. Mike's eye rested with suspicion on Mad Harry, but he was unshaven; still, that didn't signify. Cockney, with a clean bandage on his head, tried to thrash out the question of who had used the razor last. It was a task more thorny than discovering who turned out the gas for fun at the Philanthropists' Teetotal Hand Out. Little Michael, beginning to peer under his eye-patch now—with an eye and a half, as it were—grumbled a great deal about the disappearance. It would give a man who didn't know them such a poor opinion of cattlemen! Mike turned his troubled face to Michael, puzzling over him; with no vocabulary to express his feelings he wondered dumbly if Michael really had so high an opinion of a "Push." The Inquisitive One drew Scholar aside anxiously, and with intense eagerness asked him: "You don't think I got it, do you?"

Mike was gloomy all that day. At night there was again a sing-song, but it was not a very great success. One man, called upon for a song, said he couldn't sing; another said: "Get on your feet and sing. What the hell's the matter with you? Are you sitting on the razor?" Another, who had danced a breakdown without being asked, was told that he was no dancer, and that if that there razor could only be found he'd have his throat cut.

Mike watched to see which men found these recurrent references merely amusing, which looked disgusted, which appeared guilty; but it was impossible even to begin the winnowing in that way. A flutter of more pleasant talk ricocheted about, Molls and Biddies, and what not—names of streets, descriptions of where they lay. One man stood up and sang the praises of a certain lady friend. Mike's eyes opened wide and he stared; his face gloomed. He shot out a hand, pointing at the man.

"Do you know what I'm going to tell you about her?" he said. Faces turned to see what Mike had to say, and he said. The man looked belligerent for a moment.

"No, no!" cried Mike to those who laughed. "No, no! I'm not talking fanciful. I know the woman."

That settled it. Those who had listened believed that she was beneath contempt, for there was verity in Mike's gesture. One of those from the lower deck, who had been in the razor queue, and was grateful, called to Scholar: "If you don't know Liverpool, Michigan," evidently he had heard whence Scholar had come, "you come with me. There's a moll I know—you'll like her."

"Pay no attintion to them," broke in Mike. "Them fellers sees a crimp in a petticoat and they starts singing about her."

"That's right," agreed another. "Don't you go with him. You come along of me." He looked Scholar up and down. He would be rather proud to introduce Scholar, as a shipmate, to the lady in question.

Mike growled: "Scholar's coming with me," and turning to Scholar, very friendly, his manner reminiscent in a far-off way of a kindly host: "You come with me, Scholar," he said. "There's a fine motherly woman I know——" and he nodded. "I'll put you on to her."

Scholar wondered if he should say: "Thank you very much." Instead he drew at his empty pipe and looked at nothingness before him; and the propeller whirled, and the screws beat on.

CHAPTER XVII

The feeding of cattle and of men was over for the afternoon. Scholar was the first up on the poop. He leant over the rail, looking away out and forward. The south end of Ireland was off there somewhere, out of sight, northwards. The Glory surged on, in a pother of spray, a mile of smoke trailing from her smoke-stack a point or two off the bows, southward. There was a touch of humidity in the air that was not the humidity of the sea. It could not be said that Scholar had enjoyed the trip any more than any of them, but nearing home the call of home seemed to be an open question. In this riff-raff below him he had found something likeable, something good amid all the evil. The people at home, where he was going, he knew, could not appreciate one word that he might have to tell of the voyage or the men. No, if they pitied, it would be a very patronising pity, and even that annulled by censure. His womenfolk would find only one more opportunity to say: "What awful creatures men are!" Last night he had pitied these men that they had no homes to go to. To-day, alert for Ireland, near home, the sentimental glow was fading from the vision of his own. He felt himself homeless as they. And then ahead there, northwards in the sea, he beheld something advancing rapidly.

Some of the other men came on deck, among them Mike, who drew near and looked in the direction of Scholar's gaze; and just then Scholar saw what it was that came like a low cloud through the many foam-topped, spray-topped waves—a blue-grey warship, lying low, with four short funnels, a very short mast; and he experienced a thrill. He had met Englishmen who were less moved than Frenchmen by such lines as those that tell of how "the coastwise lights of England watch the ships of England go." If they had objected to the same poet's: "Lord of our far-flung battle line," to the Hebraic self-righteousness in that, he could have been at one with them; that was a different matter. He appreciated Kipling's song of the "coastwise lights of England." He also appreciated Arnold's reminder to Victorian Englishmen that England could be improved; but he loved the England that Arnold, in his love, made to bloom and flower in such poems as his "Scholar Gipsy," that England that coloured the same poet's "Resignation." It struck him that the Englishman who could not tolerate a song simply because the name of England was in it would be highly repulsive and irksome even to Arnold, who so often lectured Englishmen upon their self-satisfaction. They could not understand, these people; the moment they were left alone they strayed. The road was pointed out to them time and again, and off they went, but the moment they were alone they deviated into paths that led otherwise, without knowing.

Scholar felt a thrill at sight of this long, low vessel that came with tremendous speed, wasp-like, sweeping out from the haze beyond which lay home. It might be a slightly tarnished home, the house not all in order, but, by God, it was home, and worth loving and setting in order. He had a feeling as of: "How they do watch!" There was nobody on her decks. She was a thing of beauty, although of steel. She was nearly abreast now, but far off. Then suddenly, hammering along between the sheep-pens (the tarpaulins off them now) came a man in haste the bo'sun—and as he ran this way sternwards upon the deck of the Glory , there appeared, as out of a hole in the deck of that long, low wasp of a thing, a small black spot that ran sternwards upon it. The bo'sun was already at the flagpole, loosening the flag halyard, the flag was dipping, and a little square of cloth, away off there on that other ship, was dipping too, down and up. She slid past, rushing through the sea; the spot went forward on her and disappeared again; she was hidden in the smoke reeking from her four short stacks.

It had not occurred to Scholar before; and thereafter, when more ships began to appear, where the sea-trails of the world converged, he imagined the people on their decks all holding their noses.

CHAPTER XVIII

A callous-looking grey morning was breaking in the Mersey. Now and then, when a bell-buoy heaved, the bell tolled. It was just like that—tolling, tolling them home. Another steamer, swathed in mist, surged along, behind and a little to the side, but rapidly drawing level. Captain Williamson, coming to the bridge and gazing astern at that steamer that was but half vapour, turned away with some agility after his scrutiny, for she was another cattleboat, and he wanted to be berthed first. Those members of the "Push," the morning's feeding being over, who strolled as far forward as to the bridge, heard him speaking down the tube to the engine room. Sounds of energetic shovelling came up from the stoke-hole; the Glory put on the pace a little more as the other ship came level. The Glory led again. Captain Williamson, pacing the bridge, stirring up the morning haze, looked pleased. Again the other ship forged level, and he was heard chanting: "Shake her up! Shake her up!" The cattlemen took up the refrain, and addressed the deck on which they walked and double-shuffled, with "Shake her up! Shake her up!"

Michael leant on the rail and gazed at the rival ship with one eye, raised the shade slightly from the other and looked, to see if it improved.

"No, you're thinking of the Hibernian," replied Michael, still holding the shade up and peering, like a man testing new eye-glasses.

Cockney humped his shoulders and shot his face forward, then noticed Michael lifting that lid over his eye, and his mouth gave a twist of something like shame, and he turned away.

"It's the S dropped off," said the Inquisitive One. "I came over on her once—Siberian."

Mike shook his shoulders and that baffled look was on his forehead as he turned from them.

"Oh, indade," he said. "Nobody knows anything about it; and everybody's talking. You think you know all about it; maybe I think I know a hell of a lot; but we all know damn-all. If you want to know, keep your mouth shut till we get ashore. They'll be paid off along of us likely, and you'll hear what the man at the Board of Trade Office calls them. She's another ould ship the same as us, and that's enough to be goin' on with."

Suddenly their feet tingled and the sound of the siren came. They looked round and up. The haze had not thickened again-it was not for that she whistled.

"She's whistling for the cattle-sheds," somebody said. One of the others explained that in a race like this the steamer that passed a certain point first was the first to be unloaded, and the Glory was whistling to let them know ashore that she had done it. Some of the youngsters asked the older men if this was so, but they shook their heads; they did not know. They had often made the trip, but rules change. "Wait and see," was all that anybody could say.

A radiance began to come down into the haze, and the particles of moisture sparkled. A glory, a splendour, but ever so tenuous, ever so frail, was on the river-mist, a mist that waned fainter and fainter. The men lay along the rail and looked into the mist as though they sought to make sure of that evanescent radiance in it, to make sure that it was there, was not a trick of their eyes. The other steamer had now the air of giving up, fell behind, foot by foot, content to be second. One of the young men plucked Mike's elbow; he had been in a knot looking the other way.

"Is that right, Mike?" he asked, pointing to the long melancholy promenade that showed up ashore. "Is that where the toffs go to pick up the flash molls?"

The Inquisitive One fell to chatting with Scholar, but asking questions in a way wholly different from that of the two catechists whom Scholar had desired to keep at arm's length—the Cardiff man, and the man from Fife in Scotland.

The Inquisitive One looked far off briefly, then a new thought came again to him.

There was a look in Scholar's eyes that seemed somehow akin with that baffled look that showed in Mike's. He nodded. The Inquisitive One stood back, hands in pockets, and examined him with great interest.

Mike turned away slightly. The Inquisitive One waggled his head sidewise as a sign that he wanted to draw Scholar aside again. Nobody who heard had jeered; some had pretended not to hear; only the chumming Welshman and the man from Dysart in Fife, standing together and apart, looked scorn, hate, contempt at these other two. Scholar was amazed to see that there were tears in the eyes of the Inquisitive One as he said:

"I often wonder what it's like going home. I've never had a father, and I've never had a mother. Straight! Will you be coming back on the ship?"—this suddenly, eagerly.

But they were now being warped into the land, through channels between dock walls into docks, round the dock walls, sailors coming running along to hang over rope-fenders. The cattlemen kept quiet. There seemed to be no end to it. Men on shore caught ropes and ran, clattering and yelling. It was as if they were dragging for a corpse. Scholar felt a horror of the land, even as he had felt a horror of putting out to sea in that safe full of madmen, madmen that he felt now he would like to know more of—not probing like the Welshman, or the man from Fife, not even perhaps questioning personally like the Inquisitive One, but just sailing the seas with them after they had got over their cups. Suddenly they found that the ship was still. There was a rope ladder hanging over the other side. A broad-beamed little steamer lay there. The unruly members of the "Push," the shirk-works, were piling over the side and down the rope ladder.

"They're going to lave us to run the cattle ashore!" said Mike, disgusted, and he swung his legs over. Over they all went, one after the other, down the rope ladder, and jumped thence on to the bluff little steamer, where a man in a jersey stood looking at them curiously, staring; and another, a custom-house man, sat on the further bulwark watching the descent on the grin. The Man with the Hat came down, his wrist through the handles of his valise.

"Carry your bag?" jeered the younger men among the cattlemen below. "Carry your bag, mister?"

But cause for greater amusement was beheld higher up. There was Four Eyes, wrestling with a small trunk, round which he had made a rope fast, trying to lower it over the side. They whooped and cheered, they rocked with delight. "Lower away there!" they shouted. "All clear below! Drop it in the dock!" They advised him to make fast to the capstan. As he struggled with the box they suggested that he should "hail them two fellers on the bridge," and ask them to give him a hand—namely the pilot and the skipper. The face of Rafferty appeared over the rail; he gnashed his teeth, he yelped at them.

"It ain't our place to run the cattle ashore," they called back. Others looked a little forward, turning their heads, for a sharp whistle had sounded thence. Candlass, standing on the top of a sheep-pen, raised thumb and forefinger, and beckoned gently with the finger—then, with his head, gave an inclination inboard.

The man in the jersey, who had been standing like a squat effigy, moved to a rope by which this little craft was moored alongside, pressed feet to the bulwark, hung on to the rope so that the great hull of the Glory (she looked a massive thing again) loomed close and they could stretch out to the rope ladder. Rafferty above hauled in Four Eyes' trunk with great vehemence, that "poor feller" standing by like a great child watching the rough-handling of a toy. They swarmed on deck again. Candlass came aft and stood beside them.

The ship began to move on again, towards a sound of lowing of cattle and shouting of men, and Candlass walked forward, left them, and stood chatting amidships with Rafferty. There appeared suddenly, running into their midst, swarming on deck like rats, several grimy stokers, looking for friends, it would appear, among the cattlemen. Mike eyed the little knots that drew aside.

"If you want your razor, Scholar," he said quietly, "keep your eye on these fellows. Whoever's got it up here will very likely slip it to one of his friends in the black hole, for fear of you putting a copper on them."

The willing ones followed them; the shirkers remained, and were not worried. Indeed all were not required—they would be in each other's way. They only went below now to knock out the divisions between the pens with a crow-bar or two, or the back of an axe, or whatever implement came handy; and as they were so employed the shore-push thrust in their gangways and swarmed up them.

A couple of men that Mike called "them toffs" were speaking to Candlass at the top of the gangway that stretched to the main deck. They paid no heed to the men who had brought the cattle across, or at least little heed. One of them, once, while talking, roved his eyes from Candlass along the deck, looked at this cattleman, looked at that, half absently; saw Scholar, seemed for a moment to be more interested in him than in the threesome chat; looked then at Mike, up and down, appeared to measure him as if he thought: "Jove! There's a big fellow!" nodded "Yes, yes," to Candlass, looked at Mike's face again with an expression faintly reminiscent of that which had showed on Smithers' face now and then when he stood beside the wicket of the little movable office in the back of the shed at Montreal as the Hard Cases trooped up to sign on. Mike bent down, lifted a board, and stepped forward to a great steer that thrust its head, and its great long horns, over the front barricade. The "toff" looked at him, alert, frowning; but all the movements of these Hard Cases seemed belligerent to strangers, and Mike might not be going to rough-handle the brute. So he merely watched, intent. Mike took the end of the board and scrubbed the steer under its chin as it raised its great head, like a cat wanting to be scratched; it turned its head round and over slowly, to have the office well done all round.

"Well, bejabbers, this is your last scratch! You're a fine looking baste. You might have had a worse trip!" Mike addressed the steer, that baffled look on his face, and his eyes kindly.

When they did find themselves, anon, rightly upon the shore, they clustered there, masterless men. Jack asked: "What are we waiting here for?" His partner said: "I don't know," and swore. Somebody moved away, saying: "Come on, come on—what are we waiting here for?" and a few followed him.

He admitted that he did not know. A long, thin, grey-faced man drew nigh and stood beside the knot. Somebody took him into the conversation, half turning to him, but not looking at him, unaware that a stranger had joined them, and he answered, but not eagerly, quite casually. Thus he dropped into the talk: what kind of a trip had they had? what were they hanging around for? They didn't know. One of them asked if he was So-and-So, of Such-and-Such a boarding house? He admitted he was. Was he there still? He merely nodded—it was all very casual, but it seemed settled soon, seemed to be in the air somehow that they had arranged that they might as well bunk at his boarding house as anywhere else.

Then Candlass appeared on the wharf, wearing a white collar instead of the blue-and-white striped rubber one of the trip. Some of the men approached him, and he turned in his walk as a housemaster, one somewhat feared as a rule but respected, turns to hear what some boys would say to him, who have the air of wondering if they should approach at all on the day before breakup. He answered gently, easily, seemed to suggest by his manner that he would see them through as well as possible, but that even he was in the clutch of circumstance. It was with the hint of a shrug and with a little toss of the head and a half smile that he left them. The crowd formed afresh around those who had spoken to him.

"Well," said Mike, sticking a hand under his belt, "we may as well drift up that way, then." "That way" was the Board of Trade Office.

"Who the hell is he?" asked one with a mania for trying to make others quarrelsome, and then backing out. The older hands filed off; the others followed. The Inquisitive One saw their resemblance to a procession as they drew aside to let a traction engine go past, a rattling, smoking, devil-waggon, pulling a string of lorries laden with swaying beer kegs. He took out his mouth organ. Rattling and deafening the engine and drays quivered by, the men shouting: "Oh, beer!" or: "How would you like to get all them inside you?" The procession went on, the irresponsible tail-end of it cake-walking, and the mouth organ, with full tremolo, in full blast, made music for it with the air of a bottle-song of the halls.

CHAPTER XIX

The "Push" came to a halt before the Board of Trade building. The less juvenile, and the elders, looked broodingly at it. The younger fry sparred, and danced, and fought for possession of the mouth organ. Now and then a man who leant against a wall of the neighbourhood would catch the eye of one of the youths in the crowd and nod amiably, and the man nodded at would either look away quickly, or would tauten his legs and chuck his chest a little, look up the wall behind the man who had pretended to be an acquaintance, slow, casual, and so extricate himself. Now and then somebody who really knew one of the group would approach, and all would look at him shrewdly to see what his intentions might be.

A voice came: "You're there, are you?" It was Rafferty. Cheerily he was asked when the pay-off would be. "Oh, not for some time yet," he said. One man announced a wish that they could get something to eat; and that set them all a-going with their wishes. A few had a coin or two left. It was for something to eat that the Inquisitive One raised his plaintive voice.

"I have half-a-crown or so," said Scholar. "Come and let us have breakfast. Come and have some breakfast, Mike," he added, turning. Two others ran close, approaching him in a kind of cake-walk, inviting themselves. "I don't think I've enough money," said Scholar.

Scholar and he headed for a cheap restaurant, but Mike refused to accompany them and jeered at those who showed signs of intending to follow, so that they subsided. The man behind the counter nodded pleasantly to them and wished them good morning, and the early waitress rustled after them to a marble-topped table. The Inquisitive One felt nervous, but Scholar's suggestion of ham and eggs made his eyes bulge. Large cups of coffee were brought, rolls of butter, and the ham and eggs.

The girl waited. Scholar wondered why; then, even as it struck him that perhaps he was expected to pay before eating, she turned away.

Charlie looked at him a trifle suspiciously. Was it possible that this man was one of those swell crooks in embarrassed circumstances? Was he beginning his daring fancy tricks and games of bluff the moment he got ashore? Here was out of such company for him! The girl was walking over to the man behind the counter, he looking up expectant, for she had evidently something to say.

"It's the rule," she said. "I was just going to ask the boss, seeing you—thank you," for he put the coin in her hand.

They took up knife and fork, and as they did so the girl returned to say, quite sweetly: "Didn't notice. The manager says this is an American coin."

"So it is," said Scholar easily. "I wasn't thinking. I haven't got anything else, either—I have only American money. Still, that's the same as two shillings; that will be all right, won't it?"

Charlie pushed his plate forward on the table, pushed his coffee cup forward. The girl departed, and the manager called: "I'm not supposed to take foreign money, but that's all right. Have your breakfasts. The money-changing places aren't open yet."

"By gee, you'll get run in!" whispered the Inquisitive One. "Get run in!" He pushed the dishes still farther from him.

"Thank you very much," answered Scholar, looking to the manager. "Perhaps you could send somebody out to get the money changed." He smiled cheerfully. "You don't know us, and we might run off."

"Oh, that's all right—there's a place just across the street," said the man behind the counter. (The girl put down the fifty-cent piece beside him.) "Just arrived?" he asked affably.

Charlie kept gibbering: "Can't eat! Can't eat! My appetite's gone! I feel stalled before I start. Couldn't touch it. Might have got run in. Might have got me run in!" and he flared up angry for a moment. "That's what you might have done to me."

The girl looked at him, pensive, having caught part of this. She moved nearer to the manager, and they whispered; Charlie eyed them.

"Don't tell him which one," whispered the Inquisitive One. And then, next moment: "No, tell him, tell him, because he'll find out, and it'll make it worse."

Scholar, applying himself to his breakfast, said: "We've just come off the Glory ."

Charlie rose from his chair, and then sat down again. The manager suddenly dived from behind his counter and ran outside. The Inquisitive One eyed the door. He wondered if it might not be better to rush now; but the manager's voice could be heard outside, and then he dived in again.

"Where's that—oh, yes, here!" and he lifted the fifty-cent piece from the counter and handed it to a red-faced man who followed him.

"Perhaps it's bad!" moaned Charlie, and again he looked suspiciously at Scholar.

Relief showed in Charlie's eyes as the red-faced man put the coin in his pocket, handing the manager some other money in its place.

"Me? No, can't touch it. Can't eat to-day." The relief was no better for him than the ordeal, so far as raising an appetite went.

"That's all right. You can give me another lump in my tea when I send over. Good morning."

The manager came over to give the change himself, to chat about the weather, and the Atlantic, to ask if there had been any cattle lost coming over, how many head they had, so on, making pleasant conversation.

"No," Charlie gurgled. And for all the friendly "good morning" of the manager when they did rise to go, and the friendly nod of the waitress, great was his relief to be out in the street again. He gave Scholar to understand that they could congratulate themselves on getting off like that, that it couldn't happen twice, and as Scholar continued to talk soothingly, the Inquisitive One became declamatory, and anon vituperative.

Those of the "Push" that still hung around the Board of Trade doors saw, on the return of these two, that there had been some friction. But again the crowd there began to gather and increase, and everybody had something to say. They hung about for hours; now and then somebody passed by and cried "Ahoy!" to some member and carried him off for a drink. At last one of them caught sight of Captain Williamson, with cheery red face and rolling gait, entering the Board of Trade offices. Another group of men formed—such another as this from the Glory —"cattle-stiffs." Some sailors hove in sight, in stiff hats and stiff, and strangely creased, new-brushed shore-going clothes, and smoked their little short pipes, coming to an anchor near by, and standing in a circle to talk quietly. But at last Candlass appeared, hand up and beckoning, and the "Push," subduing its voices, came up to the swinging glass doors, passed through, some manfully, others with a look left and right as though on guard lest the place might prove to be a trap. The big floor space seemed to worry them; it made their foot steps sound so loud and echoing. The long counter, broad and shiny, seemed rather magnificent; the windows suggested a church, the wire netting a cage.

"There's the skipper," said one to another, and they looked through to where Captain Williamson sat. They were pleased with him for having won the race with the Iberian , Siberian , or whatever it might be called—the rival. They spoke in low voices. Candlass shepherded them, one at a time, to get their money and sign off. When the Man with the Hat, who had waited about alone who knows where, appeared there were glances of hard interest. Safely off the ship somebody had let out that he had hazed the cook, though everybody thought that the part of the rumour relating to a revolver was by way of superfluous frilling to the story. They looked at him with interest, somewhat as they would look at a boxer if the news passed down the street that he was coming along, or as they would stand outside the prison where a murderer awaited execution till the flag went up. One by one they stepped forward, and Candlass gave them "the wink." They felt themselves in his hands, as schoolboys with an under-master, when there has to be an interview with the Head. Soon, however, they got into the swing and Candlass stood aside. Michael, retiring from the counter with his hand full of shillings, stepped up to him.

"Will you do something for me, Mr. Candlass?" he said. "Will you keep half of this for me until we get back to Montreal?" He divided off the half, but it seemed too much. Present needs were surely greater than future. "Well, I don't know—perhaps ye might take for me——" he went on slowly.

"I will," replied Candlass. "And look here—I want you two to promise me something." They looked at him. "I want you to promise me that there'll be no more fighting ashore between you. Let bygones be bygones."

Cockney made a motion of spitting on his hand and held it out to Michael, who took it, and looking at Candlass said: "That's a promise, Mr. Candlass."

"How's the eye?" asked Candlass, and looked, putting a hand on little Michael's head and raising the blind with a thumb. "It might have been worse," he said. "It might have been very bad."

The youth who had asked for his shaving water for three mornings in succession got the length of the door, which an official held open; then he turned round.

Rafferty came back from looking into nothingness with his queer red eyes, standing apart; and the youth, putting his lips together, made a sound of contempt with them, and then dived from the place. Rafferty looked away again; one or two of the men grinned sympathetically; one or two gave a "Huh!" as who should say: "He had to do something like that!"

Mike, scratching the side of his head and pushing up his cap, had a troubled look in his eyes, glanced at the door, said something about impudence, and then turned to Scholar, who had now taken his money and received his discharge.

"If ye do, Mike can teach ye the ropes. Don't forget. Will ye have a drink before——"

"You're right—another on the top of it, and so on. Men that's friends will start quarrelling in liquor." Mike looked as if he had much to say as they drifted towards the door. The tall shepherd from the boarding house was outside waiting for them. Somebody said: "We're going to see Frenchy off in the train." Another announced: "Scholar's taking a train, too." Mike blew a deep breath. He turned round and looked at them as though they worried him, shaking his head upwards, and they fell back.

"I'll not be after coming with you," he said. "Them fellers will be cheerin' and screamin.' We may meet again, or we may not . It's all bloody strange," and he held out his hand. They did not pump-handle; they grasped hands warmly. Each felt that the other had much in common with him, but they had need of an interpreter.

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