It proved to be a small fire in the excursion boat’s stores, and the
_Hudson_ doused it with a single line of hose. But there was much smoke
and more confusion in the bow of the steamboat; and when the _Hudson_
drew off and left the crew of the _Leo_ to swab down the wet decks,
“Shine” was hidden in the forepeak of the steamer--behind a pile of cut
rails that were used to ballast the nose of the boat--listening to the
noises overhead like a boy playing truant.
No one knew he was there, except his friend Doherty, the ex-fireman,
whom he had found on the lower deck of the _Leo_. “’S all right,
Shorty,” “Shine” whispered. “I been knocked out by the smudge, see?
I fell down the hatch here, an’ was bumped stiff. Make yerself scarce
now, an’ let one o’ those deckers fin’ me. Ill raise a holler in a
minute.”
Doherty retreated unobserved. When all was quiet again on the _Leo_,
the men in the forecastle heard an agonized moaning on the other side
of the forward bulkhead, and came to “Shine’s” aid with oaths of
amazement. They raised him up the ladder and supported him, limping
weakly, aft to the bar. He said in a voice that shook pathetically,
“Have a gargle, boys, on me.” And he said it with such an effect of
unselfish thoughtfulness in pain that it won them all.
When Doherty returned forward, he found “Shine” the centre of a ring
of admiring deckers who were “gargling” around him in all sympathy.
One of them was rubbing his crippled side; another supported him by the
arm. He was wincing heroically. “Come in, Shorty,” he gasped. “What’ll
yuh have?... That’s all to the good, now, boys. I’m all right. Gi’ me
a beer.” He leaned up against the bar and smiled engagingly. “This’s
on me. Say, I pull out sixty-six plunks a month, an’ no more chance to
spend it ’an a savin’s bank. What d’ yuh think o’ that? Give a man the
hottest job in Little ol’ Ne’ York, an’ want to keep him on the dry!
What’s yours?”
They received his delicate witticisms with appreciative guffaws, and he
beamed with the cordiality of his invitations to drink. He was flushed
with the pride of the native who has returned to his old haunts, rich
with the loot of the alien. “This ’s on me,” he kept repeating.
“What’ll yuh have?”
Soda fizzed, beer frothed, whiskey clucked in the neck of the bottle.
The brown hands went over the bar in an eager scramble, and the fat
barkeeper juggled with glasses, bottles, siphons and boxes of cigars
like a stage magician. “Sure.... On the spring line.... Th’ ol’
_Cyrus_.... Have a cigar, then.... This ’s on me.”
Doherty, in the background, listened sourly to the laughter of the
deckmen, until he saw the size of the roll of greenbacks which “Shine”
drew from his trousers’ pocket. Then he took a last hasty gulp of
liquor and stood looking fixedly at the bottom of his empty glass. He
put it down on the bar and elbowed his way to “Shine.”
“Have another, Shorty?”
“Naw. I’ve had enough.” He touched “Shine’s” elbow significantly and
slid his eyes around in a sidewise stealthiness without moving his
head. “Nittsy!” he said, out of the corner of his mouth.
“Shine” finished his glass, shook hands with the circle, and followed
his friend to the gangway. “What’s up?”
Doherty seemed embarrassed. “Well, say,” he explained, under his
breath, “they’re a gang o’ strong-arms. I was a-scared they’d get yuh
loaded an’ shove yuh fer yer wad.”
“Shine” laughed. “I guess there’s no one in that bunch o’ ’bos could
frisk me any.”
Doherty wriggled and grinned. “What’re yuh goin’ to do?”
“Me?” “Shine” leaned on the shutter of the gangway and spat at the
water. “I’m goin’ to Coney an’ back.”
The smell of the past was sweet in his nostrils--that indescribable
smell of an excursion steamboat’s lower deck--the bilgy smell of
chill dampness, soiled paint and stale humanity. The churning of the
paddle-wheels and the swish of water under the guard filled his ears
with a remembered music. Hatless, coatless and in his bare feet, he
took the sunshine on a guileless smile and watched the shores of Long
Island gliding past in their old familiar way.
If he had not been blinded by the light and by his own generous
emotions, he might have seen something suspicious below the manner
of his former messmate, who peered at nothing with shaded eyes that
shifted cunningly and a smile that came and went. But Doherty talked
in the voice of friendship, and “Shine” listened, without looking,
basking in his own good nature.
They did not refer to the trouble with Captain Keighley. “Shine” felt
himself guilty of having deserted from that quarrel, and avoided the
mention of it. Doherty had long since concluded that the fire-boat
crew did not intend to avenge his injuries; and he was waiting for an
opportunity to make the “quitters” suffer for having failed him.
He explained that after he “quit handlin’ freight” for the
Baltic-American line, he had gone “cappin’ fer a con man that was
workin’ the hucks” on Coney--which is to say, he had been the
confederate in a shell game. He had hoped to start a “graft” of some
sort on the Island himself, but--as he put it plaintively--“a dip went
through me fer all I’d put down, one night when I was paddin’ it in a
doss-house on the Bow’ry.”
“Shine” laughed good-naturedly at this tale of another man’s
misfortunes, as tickled with the sound of his Coney thieves’ slang as
an exiled Highlander who hears his native Scotch.
Doherty licked his lips. “D’ yuh remember Goldy Simpson?”
“Do I?” “Shine” cried. “Me an’ Pikey Moffat--”
“Goldy’s back at Coney.”
“G’ wan! No!”
“Sure. He was up town yesterday lookin’ fer a ballyhoo man.”
“No!” “Shine” laughed immensely.
“By ----, I’d like to see him. I’d like t’ ask him if he remembers the
time me an’ Pikey Moffat--”
“Why don’t yuh?” Doherty cut in. “Yuh c’u’d go back by trolley just as
well as not.”
“Shine” looked doubtfully at his feet.
“Borry a pair o’ kicks an’ a hat in the foc’sle.”
“Shine” hesitated.
“Come on,” Doherty cried. “Let’s blow off up the island together. I’m
lookin’ fer a job boostin’ er ballyhooin’ er somethin’.”
It was the voice of temptation sweetly tuned to “Shine’s” own
inclination. He could, in fact, get back to the fire-boat more quickly
by rail than by water; and even if he did not--if he “stopped over”
long enough to call on “Goldy” and the “gang”--the _Leo_ would carry
back word of his accident in the forepeak, and he could invent more
excuses to explain his further delay.
He said, “Let’s get the boots.” And when the _Leo_ tied up at her
pier on the Coney Island beach, he was helped ashore by Doherty and a
deck-hand who had lent him a hat, a coat and a pair of shoes for two
dollars.