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:
"Whit deck are you on?"
"The main deck."
"I wondered. I never seen you on the lower deck. Where have you been?"
"What do you mean?" asked Scholar.
"Have you been in Canada?"
"Yes--part of it."
"What part?" asked the Welshman.
"Oh, I came up through Lower Ontario."
"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."
"What states?" asked the Welshman.
"Michigan."
"Whit was ye daeing in Michigan?" asked the Fifeman.
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."
"Getting what? I don't understand you."
"Oh, you understand all right."
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.
"What was them two saying to you?" he asked, as they walked forward
once more.
"Oh, just asking questions about where I had been, and all that sort of
thing."
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."
"Perhaps he's afraid of being asked questions," suggested Scholar,
laughing.
"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."
Scholar had a certain depression in his heart. Mike was perhaps aware
of it.
"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.