A Man's Man Part 15

"Drop that bar," shouted the genial Mr. Gates, "and I'll kill you!"

"Half a minute, please," said Hughie, as unruffled as if he were putting on the gloves for a ten-minute spar in a gymnasium. "I'm not going to fight a man in sea-boots in my bare feet. Can any gentleman oblige me with--Thank you, sir! You are a white man."

A pair of oily canvas tennis shoes, with list soles, pattered down on the deck beside him. Their donor, the "white man,"--a coal-black individual attired chiefly in cotton-waste,--was smiling affably from the engine-room hatchway.

"They'll dae ye fine," he observed unexpectedly, and disappeared below.

In a moment Hughie had slipped on the shoes. Then, casting away the bar, he hurled himself straight at the head of Mr. Gates.

In the brief but exhilarating exhibition which followed Mr. Gates realised that a first mate on the defensive is a very different being from a first mate on the rampage. He had become so accustomed to breaking in unresisting dock-rats and bemused foreigners, taking his own time and using his boots where necessary, that a high-pressure combat with a man who seemed to be everywhere except at the end of his fist--to his honour he never once thought of employing his foot--was an entire novelty to him. He fought sullenly but ponderously, wasting his enormous strength on murderous blows which never reached their mark, and stolidly enduring a storm of smacks, bangs, and punches that would have knocked a man of less enduring material into a pulp. But there is one blow which no member of the human family can stand up to, glutton for punishment though he be. Hughie made a sudden feint with his left at his opponent's body, just below the heart. Gates dropped his guard, momentarily throwing forward his head as he did so. Instantaneously a terrific upper-cut from Hughie's right took him squarely under the chin. Mr.

Gates described a graceful parabola, and landed heavily on his back on deck, striking his head against a ring-bolt as he fell. The whole fight had lasted less than four minutes.

Hughie was about to a.s.sist his fallen opponent to rise, when he heard a warning cry from half-a-dozen voices. He swung round, to find the captain making for him, open-mouthed, with the capstan-bar. He sprang lightly aside--a further blessing on those list shoes!--and his opponent charged past him, bringing down the bar with a flail-like sweep upon the drum of a steam windla.s.s. Next moment Hughie, grasping the foremast shrouds, leaped on the bulwarks and pulled himself up to the level of the bridge, which was unoccupied save by the man at the wheel, who had been an enthusiastic spectator of the scene below.

Having climbed upon the bridge, and so secured the upper ground in case of any further attack, Hughie leaned over the rails and parleyed. In his hand he held a pair of heavy binoculars, which he had taken out of a box clamped to the back of the wind-screen.

"The first man who attempts to follow me up here," he announced, when he had got his breath back, "will get this pair of gla.s.ses in the eye.

Captain, I don't think you are a great success as an employer of labour.

You haven't got the knack of conciliating your men. Can't we come to terms? Mine are very simple. I want some clothes--my own, for choice. If you haven't got them, anything quiet and un.o.btrusive will do. But I decline to go about in orange-and-red pyjama trousers in mid-Atlantic to please you or anybody else. For one thing they're not warm, and for another they're not usual. If you will oblige me in this matter, I am quite willing to live at peace with you. I don't see that you can really suppress me except by killing me, and that is a thing which I don't think you have either the authority or the pluck to do. Why not give me a billet in the engine-room and cry quits?"

Captain Kingdom looked up at the obstreperous mutineer on the bridge, and down at the rec.u.mbent Mr. Gates on the deck, and ground his teeth.

Then he looked up to the bridge again.

"All right," he growled. "Come down!"

CHAPTER VIII

A BENEFIT PERFORMANCE

Hughie, having been relieved to a slight extent from sartorial humiliation, entered upon his engine-room duties forthwith.

The society in which he found himself consisted of Mr. Angus, the chief,--engineers, like gardeners, editors, and Cabinet Ministers, are practically all Scotsmen,--Mr. Goble, the acting-second (_vice_ Mr.

Walsh, sick), and a motley gang of undersized, half-mutinous, wholly vile sweepings of humanity in the form of firemen. Mr. Walsh was suffering from an intermittent form of malaria contracted years ago in an up-river trip to the pestilential regions round Saigon. Mr. Angus, a h.o.a.ry-headed and bottle-nosed Dundonian, who could have charmed a sc.r.a.p-heap into activity, received Hughie with native politeness, and paid him the compliment of working him uncommonly hard. He explained (with perfect truth) that the only reason why he was not at that moment driving a Cunarder was a habit of his, viewed by certain owners with regrettable narrowness of vision, of "takin' a drap, whiles." The concluding adverb Hughie correctly estimated to mean "whenever I can get anything to drink."

"I canna see what for they should be sae partic'lar aboot it," mused Mr.

Angus in recounting the circ.u.mstance, "for I haundle her jist as weel drunk as sober. However, here I am, and there's an end o't. Aiblins it's jist as weel. I could rin the engines o' ony Cunarder afloat, but I ken fine there's not hauf-a-dozen men in their hale fleet could knock eight knots oot o' the auld Orinoco. There's a kin' o' divinity aboot it, I doot. A man's pit whaur he's maist want.i.t."

John Alexander Goble, the acting-second, proved to be a man of greater depth and more surprises than his superior. He it was who had thrown the list shoes to Hughie before the battle with Mr. Gates, which showed that he was at heart a Sportsman; he had taken the first opportunity of asking for the return of the same, which showed that he was a Scotsman; but he had found Hughie a better pair of shoes in their stead, together with some garments more suitable than the blue jumper and the orange-and-red pyjama trousers, which showed that he was a good Samaritan: and a man who is a Sportsman and a Scot and a good Samaritan all rolled into one is an addition to the society of any engine-room.

His face wore an expression of chastened gloom; and if washed and set ash.o.r.e in his native Caledonia, he would probably have received a unanimous invitation to come and glower over the plate in the doorway of the nearest Wee Free conventicle. His speech was slow and unctuous: one could imagine him under happier circ.u.mstances conducting family wors.h.i.+p, and pausing to elucidate in approved fas.h.i.+on some specially obvious pa.s.sage in the evening's "portion," thus: "From the expression, 'a michty man o' valour,' we may gather that the subject of this reference was a person of considerable stature and undoubted physical courage."

He was habitually and painfully sober, for reasons which Hughie learned from him at a period when they had more leisure to study each other's characters. He was ignorant of the first principles of mechanics, but could be trusted to keep the Orinoco's propeller-shaft revolving at a steady seventy-two to the minute; and he had a gentle compelling way with refractory firemen which made for sweet reasonableness and general harmony below stairs, what time Mr. Angus was recovering from one of those sudden and regrettable attacks of indisposition which usually coincided with the forgetfulness of the steward to lock up the cabin whisky-bottle.

Hughie berthed in the foc'sle, and was regarded by the Dagoes, Dutchmen, _et hoc genus omne_, with mingled admiration for the manner in which he had settled Mr. Gates, and mystified surprise that a man capable of such a feat should be content to live on his own rations and sleep in his allotted bunk, without desiring to make researches into the respective succulence and comfort of his neighbours'.

On the whole Hughie found his life tolerable enough, as the Orinoco b.u.t.ted and grunted her way across the Newfoundland Banks; and he experienced no pang when the Apulia, spouting smoke from her four funnels and carrying his luggage in one of her state-rooms, swept past them on the rim of the southern horizon on their third day out. He was accustomed to rough quarters, and any new experience of things as they are was of interest to him. Moreover, he possessed the priceless possession of a cast-iron digestion; and a man so blessed can afford to snap his fingers at most of the sundry and manifold changes of this world.

Captain Kingdom and Mr. Gates for the time being held him severely aloof. The taciturn Mr. Dingle conveyed to him, by means of a surprisingly ingenious code of grunts and expectorations, that provided he, Hughie,--or Brown, as he was usually called,--was content to go his way without hunting for trouble, he, Mr. Dingle, was content to go his without endeavouring to supply it. Altogether there seemed to be no reason for doubting that the Orinoco, provided she did not open up and sink like a basket _en route_, would ultimately reach the port of Bordeaux, bringing her sheaves, in the form of Hughie and some unspeakable claret, with her.

But there is more than one way of making money out of the s.h.i.+pping trade.

One night Hughie was leaning over the taffrail behind the wheel-house at the stern. It was two o'clock, and the darkness was intensified by a heavy mist. There was almost no wind, and the Orinoco, like a draught-horse which feels the wheels of its equipage upon a tram-line, slid gratefully up and down the lazy rollers with the nearest approach to comfort that she had experienced that voyage.

Hughie was idly watching the phosph.o.r.escent wake of the propeller, wondering whether Captain Kingdom had orders to land him in France in his s.h.i.+rt and trousers or throw him overboard before they got there, when a figure rose up out of the darkness beside him. It was the easy-going Mr. Allerton.

"Hallo, Percy!" said Hughie. He had soon dropped into the nomenclature of the foc'sle.

"Look here," said Allerton, in a more purposeful voice than usual; "come along and look at this boat."

The largest of the three boats carried by the Orinoco lay close by them.

She was swung inboard and rested on deck-chocks below the davits. A canvas cover, one end of which fluttered intermittently in the breeze, roofed her over. Allerton lifted this flap and inserted his hand.

Presently there was a splutter and a glimmer, and it became plain that he was holding a lighted match under the canvas.

"Look!" he whispered.

Hughie peered under the flap. He saw water-barrels, a spirit-keg, and various bags and boxes. Then the match went out, and Allerton withdrew his hand.

The pair retired once more to their shelter behind the wheel-house.

"You saw that?" said Allerton.

"I did. Do they usually keep the boats provisioned on this s.h.i.+p? If so, I don't blame them."

"Not they. Somebody is going for a water-picnic shortly--that's all."

Hughie mused.

"Am _I_ the man, do you think?" he said at length.

"No, I don't think so. There's too much grub for one. Besides the other boats are provisioned too. It looks as if the s.h.i.+p were to be abandoned."

"But why? There's no reason why she should drop to bits for a long time yet. Rust is very binding, you know. Probably they keep her provisioned just in case--"

Allerton wagged his head sagaciously.

"There's more in this than meets the eye," he said. "It is my pleasure and privilege, as you know, to act as steward at present during the regretted retirement of the regular holder of that office, owing to eczema of the hands. (Even Mr. Gates s.h.i.+es at eczema sea-pie!) Now there's some mischief brewing in the cuddy, and they're all in it--Kingdom, Gates, and Angus. I'm not quite sure about Dingle, because he berths forward; but I think he is too. What's more: it's something they can't afford to have given away. Kingdom, who usually keeps Angus very short of drink at sea, now lets him have it whenever he wants it, and generally speaking is going out of his way to keep him sweet. That shows he can't afford to quarrel with him. And when a captain can't afford to quarrel with a chief engineer whom he hates, it usually means that he and the engineer are in together over some hanky-panky which has its roots in the engine-room. You mark my words, one of these fine nights that h.o.a.ry-headed old Caledonian will open a sea-c.o.c.k or two and rush up on deck and say the s.h.i.+p is sinking. It'll be a case of all hands to the boats; the Orinoco will go to her long-overdue and thoroughly deserved rest at the bottom, and the insurance people will pay up and look pleasant."

"H'm," said Hughie; "there seems to be something in what you say. I wish I could keep an eye on the old sinner in the engine-room; but since Walsh came back to duty I've no excuse for going there at all now. It might almost be worth while to warn Goble. He's a decent chap."

"Who is on duty in the engine-room now?"

"Walsh, I should think. Angus usually makes way for him about eight bells. But I'm not sure. Hark! Do you notice anything about the beat of the engines?"

"Not being an expert, can't say I do. They sound a trifle more asthmatic than usual, perhaps. What's up?"