"Well, see that yer don't, yer cross-eyed whelps--see that yer don't."
"And do you mean to say, you collection of squashes, that you were
laughing at me?" The pump-man, still grasping a wrench in each hand,
started across the deck after them. "D'y' mean to--"
Down the gangway they retreated in a body. Noyes looked to the captain,
but the captain was looking out over the ship's side.
Noyes went down to luncheon, and after luncheon took his cigar and his
book to his room. When next he came out, he felt that something had
happened since the little adventure of the falling block. The captain
was pacing the bridge by fits and starts. The boson was leaning over the
quarter-rail. The pump-man was busy on a small job forward.
The quiet was unnatural. Noyes decided to take his constitutional on
the long gangway of the main deck. As he paced aft he saw that some of
the crew were laying the hatches on one of the tanks. He paced forward.
By the time he was aft again they were overhauling a large tarpaulin. He
watched them while they stretched it over the hatch covers. He wondered
what they were about, for the tanks of an empty oil ship are usually
left open in fine weather.
Presently he heard one of the men say to another as they stamped down
the tarpaulined hatch, "There--there's as good a prize ring as a man'd
want." And then he began to understand.
He stayed aft, while through the smoke of one long cigar he thought it
out. When he next went forward he stopped beside the pump-man, who was
cutting a thread on a section of deck-piping. "Do you mind my watching
how you do that trick?" he asked.
The pump-man looked up. "Surely not," adding after a moment, "though
there's nothing much worth watching to it."
Noyes noticed how deftly the tools were handled. Then he said, "So you
and the big fellow are going to have it out?"
"Yes, during dinner we agreed to settle it."
"But he's a notorious bruiser--liable to kill you."
"Maybe, but I don't think so. I've trimmed 'em bigger."
"Not bigger, if they could fight at all?"
"Maybe they couldn't, but"--from beneath the grease and soot of his face
his teeth and eyes flashed swiftly upward--"they said they could."
Noyes took another turn of the long gangway. The tarpaulin was now
clamped tightly to the hatch-combings, rendering it smooth and firm
under foot. Camp-stools for the principals were also there, and two
buckets of freshly drawn water in opposite corners.
"Mr. Kieran"--Noyes had halted again beside the pump-man--"what is it
the captain's got against you?"
"Why"--he hesitated--"I don't think he's got anything against me
exactly." His next words came slowly, thoughtfully. "He may have
something against my kind, though."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, you see, a man of the captain's kind can never get a man of my
kind to play his game--and he knows it. What he wants around here is a
lot of poor slobs who will take the kicks and curses and poor grub, say
thank you, sir, and come again."
"But what game does he want you to play?"
"Well, I'm the pump-man. The ship has big bills for valving and piping
and repairing. If ever the office got suspicious and called me in on
it, why--" he shrugged his shoulders.
Noyes studied the sea for a while. By and by he faced inboard. "Kieran,
I've seen ships before, even if I do get sea-sick sometimes. Was that an
accident to-day, that block dropping on you--almost?"
"Accident?" The recurring smile flashed anew. "That's the third I've
side-stepped in two days. I was in the bottom of a tank yesterday when a
little hammer weighing about ten pounds happened to fall in. In the old
clipper-ship days, Mr. Noyes, a great trick was to send a man out on the
end of a yard in heavy weather and get the man at the wheel to snap him
overboard. On steamers, of course, we have no yards, and so little items
like spanners and wrenches and three-sheaved blocks fall from aloft. But
that's all right." The pump-man, all the while he was talking, kept
fitting his dies and cutting his threads. "I've got no kick coming. I
came aboard this ship with my eyes open, and I'm keeping 'em open"--he
laughed softly--"so I won't be carried ashore with 'em closed."
Noyes took a close look at the pump-man. The trick of light speech, his
casual manner in speaking of serious things, was not unbecoming, but
this was a more purposeful sort of person than he had reckoned; a more
set man physically, a more serious man morally, than he had thought.
There was more beef to him, too, than ever he guessed; and the face was
less oval, the jaw more heavily hung. The under teeth, biting upward,
were well outside the upper.
"But the bosun--he's altogether too huge," mused Noyes. He threw away
his cigar. "Kieran, you're too good a man to be manhandled by that
brute. You say so, and I'll stop the fight. I've got influence in the
office, and I think I could present the matter to the captain so that he
will pull the bosun off."
"Thank you, Mr. Noyes, but you mustn't. I'd rather get beat to a pulp
than crawl. All I ask is that nobody reaches over and taps me on the
back of the skull with a four-pound hammer or some other useful little
article while I'm busy with him."
"And when is it coming off?"
"Soon's we go off watch--eight bells."
"Eight bells? Four o'clock." Noyes drew out his watch. "Why, it's nine
minutes to that now."
"So near? Then I'd better begin to knock off, if I'm going to wash off
and be ready in time, hadn't I?" He finished his thread, gathered up his
stock and dies, and strolled off.
Noyes headed for the bridge. The captain's glance, as he came up the
ladder, was not at all encouraging; but Noyes was already weary of the
captain's hectoring glances.
"Captain, are you going to let it go on?" he asked, and not too
deferentially.
"Let what go on?"
"That fight. They're going to have it out in a few minutes. Aft
there--look."
"I'm not looking. And I'll take good care I don't--not in that
direction. And what I don't see I can't stop, can I? Besides, I hope he
beats that pump-man to a jelly."
"Why, what's wrong with him?"
"Wrong? He's dangerous."
"Dangerous?"
"Dangerous, yes. Why, look at the mop of hair and the eyes of him. He's
one of those trouble-hunters, that chap. And if troubles don't turn up
naturally, he'll go out and dig them up. He's like one of those kind I
read about once--used to live a thousand years ago. All he needs is a
horse seventeen hands high, and a wash-boiler on his chest, and a tin
kettle on his head, and one of those long lances, and he'd go tilting
about the country like that Don Quick-sote--"
"Don what?"
"Quick-sote--Quick-sote. That crazy Spaniard who went butting up against
windmills in that book of yours you leave around the cabin. A good name
for him--Don John Quick-sote--running around buttin' into things he
can't straighten out."
"He could do all that and yet be the best kind of a man. And the
bosun--why, before I ever heard the name of this ship, I'd heard of her
bosun. He's a notorious brute."
"He's the kind of a brute I want to have around. He will do what I order
him."
"Did you order him to bring on this fight?"
"And if I did, what of it? Do I have to account to you for what I do on
my ship? That pump-man is dangerous, I tell you. Why, just before we
sailed, I was telephoning over to the office to find out how he happened
to be shipped, and a clerk--"
"The second clerk, was it?"
"What does it matter who it was? He said to watch out for him, too--that
he was the kind who knew it all. Wherever the office got him I don't
know. And if you know anybody in the office with a pull, you ought to
put it up to them, Mr. Noyes, when you go back. This pump-man, he's the
kind recognizes no authority."
"Why, I thought he was very respectful toward your officers. And he
seems to do his work on the jump, too, captain."
"He carries out orders, yes; but if he felt like it, he'd tell me to go
to hell as quick as he'd tell the bosun. I can see it in his eye."
"Don't you think he only wants to be treated with respect?"
"Treated with respect! Who do you think you're talkin' to--the cook? I
don't have to treat one of my crew with respect. I'm captain of my own
ship, do you hear?--captain of this ship, and I'll treat the crew as I
damn please."
"I guess you will, too; but don't swear at me, captain. I'm not one of
your crew."
Noyes descended to the chart-room deck. "I wish," he breathed, "that
that pump-man had never seen this ship. They'll kill him before the
day's over."