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.
"What did he say to you?" asked another.
"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.
"What did he say?" they asked.
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.'"
"Come hon!" cried Cockney, for the men delayed again. "Come hon!"
"Who do you think you are?" said the man whose eye Cockney caught as he
spoke.
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.
"He hit me!" yelled the man.
"Get on!" said Rafferty.
A man ahead pushed Jack's partner.
"Gettin' me blimed fer this," he said. "It's you."
"Oh, you coward!" sneered Johnnie.
"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.
"Can you work a donkey-engine?" said Candlass to Scholar.
"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.
"You?" asked Candlass, elevating his brows.
"I guess," said the Man with the Hat, and strolled over to the engine.
"All right, Mike. Get busy there--get up that hay."
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.
"Do you mean that I've got to go down for it?" asked the young man.
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.
"Do you mean----" began the man, and his face was insolent.
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."
"Is that enough hay on your deck, Candlass?" came Rafferty's voice.
"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."
Obscene comments on the food were voiced.
"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."
"What for?"
The general conversation subsided so that they might listen to this one.
"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.
"What was the rest?" said Mike.
"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.