Chapter 10

The galley was a little house by itself on the after deck of the ship. Noyes saw the pump-man call out the cook, and after a time, their voices rising, he heard, "Now, cookie, no more of that slush. Mind you, I'm wasting no time talking to the captain. I'm talking to you. We know that he slips you a little ten-spot every month for keeping down the grub bills; but even if he does, you'll have to dig out something better."

"I'll be giving you what I please."

"You will, will you?" The cook was a good-sized man, and he held a skillet in his hand, but he was taken by surprise. The pump-man whipped the skillet from him, whirled him about, ran him into his galley, and closed and bolted the door behind him. A stove-pipe projected from the roof of the galley. The pump-man climbed up, stuffed a bunch of wet cotton waste into the stovepipe, and with a valve which he seemed to be taking apart, took his stand by the taffrail.

Every few minutes he got up from his valve, put his ear to the door of the shack, and listened. After twenty minutes or so he opened the door, lifted out the cook, and held him over the rail. He was gulping like a catfish.

Noyes looked to see if the captain had witnessed the little comedy. Evidently he had, for Noyes could hear him swearing.

Noyes, now on the bridge, was still chuckling over the picture of the scared cook when the pump-man came walking forward. He was swinging a pair of Stillson wrenches, one in each hand, as if they were Indian clubs, and singing as he came:

"Our ship she was alaborin' in the Gulf o' Mexico, The skipper on the quarter, with eyes aloft and low. Says he, 'My bucko boys, it's asurely goin' to blow-- Take every blessed rag from her, strip her from truck to toe, And we'll see what she can make of it.' And O, my eyes, it blew! And blew and blew, And blew and blew! My soul, how it did blow! Aboard the _Flying Walrus_ in the Gulf o' Mexico.

"The sea--"

Noyes saw him leap to one side, even as he saw a heavy, triple-sheaved block bound on the steel deck beside him. Noyes looked up. Aloft was the boson, apparently rigging up some sort of a hoisting arrangement.

The pump-man stopped to pull out a handkerchief and wipe his forehead. Then he, too, looked up. "Fine business. But did you think for a minute you--that I didn't have my eye on you?"

It took the boson a minute or two to find his tongue. When he did, it was to say, "Young fella, did you ship for a opera singer or wot?"

"I shipped for what you'll find my name signed against in the articles, and I'm on the job every minute. And I'll go on singing if it pleases me. And if it pleases me, I'll finish that song, too."

"Not on this ship, you won't, 'less you sing it in your sleep and me not in hearin'."

"I'll finish it on this ship, son. And it won't be in my sleep and you'll be within hearing."

A group of deck-hands snickered, and the boson pretended to climb down from the rigging. "You swine! What the--"

They retreated in terror. "It wasn't at you we was laffin', boson."

"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."

III

The after-rail of the chart-room deck looked almost directly down the hatch whereon the fight was to take place. As Noyes was taking his position by the rail he guessed that the bosun must have just said something which pleased the crew, for most of them were still laughing heartily.

Kieran, on a camp-stool, waited for the laughter to simmer down. He fixed a mocking eye on the bosun. "And so you're a whale, eh? And you'll learn me what a whale can do to little fishes? Well, let me tell you something about a whale, son. A whale is a sure enough big creature, but I never heard he was a fighting fish before. Now, if you knew more about some things, you'd never called yourself a whale, but a thrasher. There's the best fighting fish of them all--the thrasher. The thrasher's the boy with the wallop. He's the boy that chases the whale, and leaps high out of the water, and snaps his long, limber tail, and bam! down he comes on that big slob of a whale and breaks his back. All the wise old whales, they take to deep water when they see a thrasher hunting trouble. It's the foolish young whales that don't know enough to let the thrasher alone."

Noyes noted that the crew laughed more loudly at the bosun's rough jeers than at the more sharply pointed comment of the pump-man. But looking them over, he began to understand; these men were nearer to the bosun's type than the pump-man's. And also, no crew could long remain ignorant of which it was the captain favored. If the pump-man won, they would benefit by it, whether they were with him or no--some selfish instinct in them taught them that; while if the bosun were to win (and who could doubt that, looking at the two men?), why, 'twould be just as well to fly their colors early.

Yet there were those who favored the game-looking pump-man. Two or three had the courage to say so. It was these who cried out to give him fair play when some ten or a dozen were for rushing him off the hatch before the fight had begun at all.

Kieran thanked these with a grateful look. "That's all I want--fair play. Keep off the hatch and give us room to move around in."

And yet it did seem for a moment as if the pump-man was to get no fair play, as if the bosun's adherents would overwhelm him as he stood there on the hatch. And Noyes experienced an unpleasant chill and began to appreciate the nerve of this man who defied a crowd of alien spirits aboard a strange ship. It was more than physical courage, and when they were making ugly demonstrations toward the pump-man it was in pure admiration of his nerve that Noyes called out: "Hold up--fair play! Fair play, I say--he's only one."

Coming from the passenger, it was the psychological act at the psychological moment. They drew back, and Kieran, looking up, put his thanks in his look.

The two men faced each other. Kieran eyed the other critically. Up and down, from toe to crown, he estimated his bulk; and then, taking a step to one side, he eyed him once more, as if to get the exact depth of him.

"Well," said the bosun, and harking to his rising voice, his growling adherents simmered to silence, "now yer've seen me, what d'yer think?"

"I've seen 'em just as big, hulks of full your length and beam and draught, and in a breeze I've seen vessels of less tonnage make 'em shorten sail."

"And so yer've been in the wind-jammin' line, huh?"

"That and a few others," answered Kieran tranquilly.

"Yer'll understand a talk then. An' here's a craft won't take any sail in before you. And yer quite a hulk in the water yourself, now yer've come out where we c'n get a peek at yer."

"You ought to see me when I'm hauled out on the ways," retorted Kieran. "A fair little hulk out of water I may be, but it's below the water-line, like every good ship, I get my real bearings. But shall we get to business? I've been hearing about you for years. And for what you're going to do to me since I've come aboard--" Kieran threw up his hands. "Oh, Lord, they tell me you drove your naked fist through the wall of a saloon up on West Street before the ship put out."

"Yes, an' I can drive it through the side of you to-day."

"Man! and I'm not wall-sided either. You must be a hellion. But"--to Kieran's ears had come the sound of muttering in the crowd--"shall we get at it? We ought to make a good match of it. You may be a bit the bigger, but no matter. Three or four inches in height and sixty or seventy pounds, what's that? What d'you say?"--he turned to the crew--"he's big enough to pull a mast down on deck. Are the two of us to settle it here without interference? In the old days men fought so, the champions in front of the armies, and the winning man allowed to ride back unharmed to his comrades."

That picture, as the wily and eloquent pump-man painted it, impressed them. And he looked so frail beside the bosun! They drew well back now; all but one, the crafty carpenter, crony of the bosun and eager tool of the captain. There was that in the pump-man's eyes--the carpenter stepped to the big man's shoulder. "Listen to me. This man's no innercent. I've seen his picter somewheres."

"An' he'll see something of me in a minute, an' more than a picksher. Go away!" The boson shoved the carpenter aside.

"What I like about you, bosun"--Kieran, having shed his dungaree coat, stood now for a moment with a hand resting easily to either side of his waist--"and it sticks out all over you, is your love of a fight. And"--under his breath this, so only the bosun could hear it--"I'm going to satisfy that love of yours to-day so you'll stop your ears up if ever again you hear a man even whisper fight. Yes"--drawing off his undershirt, cinching his trousers straps above his hips, and resuming his easy speech--"I do love a real fighting man. But your friends"--he waved his hand toward the crew--"they must all stand that side. I want no man between me and the rail this side, no man behind me. 'Tisn't fair." He turned to them. "Play me fair in that. I'm giving your man the slope of the hatch, and he's tall enough in all conscience without. So let no man stand behind me."

The arms and torso of the pump-man, as he stood there naked to the waist, amazed Noyes. It surprised them all. He had seemed only a medium-sized man under the concealing dungarees. Noyes saw now that he was a bigger man by fifteen or twenty pounds than he had had any idea of; and were he padded with twenty pounds more, he would still be in good condition. Not a lump anywhere; not a trace of a bulging muscle, except that when he flexed his arm or worked his shoulders by way of loosening them up he started little ripples that ran like mice from neck to loins under the skin; and when, with this shoulder movement, he combined a rapid leg motion, Noyes fancied he could trace the play of muscle clear to his heels. His skin, too, had the unspotted gleaming whiteness of high vitality.

"He's a reg'lar race horse--a tiger," burst out from one admirer in the crowd.

The bosun, also stripped of his upper garments, looked all of his great size, and, moving about, showed himself not altogether lacking in agility. Lively, indeed, he was for his immense bulk, although, compared to the pump-man in that, he was like a moose beside a panther. "It ain't goin' to be so one-sided after all," whispered some one loudly, and recalled the pump-man's leaping across the hatch that very morning. And now, as he ducked and turned, seeming never to lack breath for easy speech, there were others who were beginning to believe it would not be so one-sided either.

"Speaking of wind-jammers, I remember"--the bosun had rushed past him like a charging elephant--"hearing my old grandfather tell of seeing a three-decker manoeuvring once. She'd come into stays about the middle of the morning watch, he said, and maybe toward three bells in the second dogwatch they'd have her on the other tack. A ship of the old line she was, a terrible fighter, if only fighting was done from moorings; but there were little devils of frigates kept sailing 'round and 'round her. What? Why don't I stand up? Stand up, is it? Why, man, I don't see where I've been hove-down yet. Hove-down, no, nor wet my rail yet. And is it you or I is fighting this end of it? Is it?"--a subtle threat with his left, one cunning feint of his right, one whip-like inboring of the left hand, and up came the bosun all-standing.

"You're easy luffed," jeered Kieran. "A moment ago you were drawing like a square-rigger before a quartering gale, and now you're shaking in the wind--yes, and likely to be aback, if you don't watch out."

The teeth locked in the bosun's head--so hard a jolt for so smoothly delivered a blow! He gazed amazed. Again a deceptive swing or two, a fiddling with one hand and the other, a moment of rapid foot-work, a quick side-step, and biff! Kieran's left went into the ribs--crack! and Kieran's right caught him on the cheek-bone and laid it open as if hit with a cleaver.

"Devil take it!" exploded Kieran, "I meant that for your jaw. It's this slippery tarpaulin." He slid his foot back and forth on the black-tarred canvas. "The cook's been dropping some of his slush on it, and you, bosun, didn't see to it that it was cleaned. You ought to look after those little things or the skipper'll be having you up to the bridge. But, come now, just once more"--he curved his left forearm persuasively--"once more and--"

But having caught the flame in the eye that never once looked away from his, the bosun wanted no more of that long-range work. It must be close quarters thereafter, or he foresaw disgrace. He appealed to the men at his back. "He won't stand up like a man. He leaps around like a bloody monkey."

"That's right, bosun. Stand up to him there, you!" That was the carpenter's voice. And others followed. 'Twasn't so men'd been used to fightin' on oil-tankers. No, sir. "Stand to him breast to breast!" The carpenter led further clamorous voices.

"Aye, breast to breast be it." Kieran was standing at ease. "And yet you all been telling how he drove his fist through a pine plank the other day up on the New York water-front."

"Yes, an' I c'n drive it through you, if yer come close to me."

"Close to you? Is this close enough to you?" No more side-stepping, no more swift shifting--just a straight step in, and they were clinched. With arms wrapped around the body of the other, each an inside and outside hold, and fingers locked in the small of the other's back, they were at it. One tentative tug and haul and the bosun began to see that he would need all his strength for this man. Another long-drawn tug and he began to fear the outcome. Again, and in place of his foe coming to him, it was his own waist he felt drawn forward. Slowly he felt his head falling back, and gradually his shoulders followed. In toward Kieran came the hollow of the big man's back, and the big man knew he had met his master; and, bitterest of all, this man poured galling words into his ear as he bore him back; gibing words, in so low a voice that they reached no further than the ear for which they were intended.

"Your own favorite Cumberland grip--where's the whale strength of you now, Bruiser Bill--your buffalo rush, hah? It's my weakness to make a show of you here on this deck--you, my Bruising Bill, the boastful lump of muscle that you are. Just muscle, no more. And now where are you--where, I say?"

The long, smooth muscles of Kieran's back were gathering and swelling. His waist, contrasted with the splendid development under his shoulders, looked slim as a corseted girl's; and not Noyes alone was noting them. Every muscle in the smooth-skinned body--it seemed as if he drew them from his very toes for service in that hug.

The bosun's breath was coming in labored gasps, yet still that terrible man kept holding him close, drawing his waist to him and increasing his pressure as he drew. "You've the tonnage and engine-room of a battleship," jeered Kieran, "but you've only the steam of an East River tug. And a low-pressure tug at that. And what little steam you had is gone. You've a big engine but no boiler. And you know what use an engine is without a boiler, don't you? Well, that's you, son--your steam's gone."