Part 19 (1/2)
Noyes studied the sea for a while. By and by he faced inboard. ”Kieran, I've seen s.h.i.+ps 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-s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p with my eyes open, and I'm keeping 'em open”--he laughed softly--”so I won't be carried ash.o.r.e 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 n.o.body 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 b.u.t.ting up against windmills in that book of yours you leave around the cabin. A good name for him--Don John Quick-sote--running around b.u.t.tin' 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p? 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 s.h.i.+pped, and a clerk--”
”The second clerk, was it?”