XVIII
IT proved to be a small fire in the excursion boat’s stores, and theHudsondoused it with a single line of hose. But there was much smoke and more confusion in the bow of the steamboat; and when theHudsondrew off and left the crew of theLeoto swab down the wet decks, “Shine” was hidden in the forepeak of the steamer—behind a pile of cut rails that were used to ballast the nose of the boat—listening to the noises overhead like a boy playing truant.
No one knew he was there, except his friend Doherty, the ex-fireman, whom he had found on the lower deck of theLeo. “’S all right, Shorty,” “Shine” whispered. “I been knocked out by thesmudge, see? I fell down the hatch here, an’ was bumped stiff. Make yerself scarce now, an’ let one o’ those deckers fin’ me. Ill raise a holler in a minute.”
Doherty retreated unobserved. When all was quiet again on theLeo, the men in the forecastle heard an agonized moaning on the other side of the forward bulkhead, and came to “Shine’s” aid with oaths of amazement. They raised him up the ladder and supported him, limping weakly, aft to the bar. He said in a voice that shook pathetically, “Have a gargle, boys, on me.” And he said it with such an effect of unselfish thoughtfulness in pain that it won them all.
When Doherty returned forward, he found “Shine” the centre of a ring of admiring deckers who were “gargling”around him in all sympathy. One of them was rubbing his crippled side; another supported him by the arm. He was wincing heroically. “Come in, Shorty,” he gasped. “What’ll yuh have?... That’s all to the good, now, boys. I’m all right. Gi’ me a beer.” He leaned up against the bar and smiled engagingly. “This’s on me. Say, I pull out sixty-six plunks a month, an’ no more chance to spend it ’an a savin’s bank. What d’ yuh think o’ that? Give a man the hottest job in Little ol’ Ne’ York, an’ want to keep him on the dry! What’s yours?”
They received his delicate witticisms with appreciative guffaws, and he beamed with the cordiality of his invitations to drink. He was flushed with the pride of the native who has returned to his old haunts, rich with the loot of thealien. “This ’s on me,” he kept repeating. “What’ll yuh have?”
Soda fizzed, beer frothed, whiskey clucked in the neck of the bottle. The brown hands went over the bar in an eager scramble, and the fat barkeeper juggled with glasses, bottles, siphons and boxes of cigars like a stage magician. “Sure.... On the spring line.... Th’ ol’Cyrus.... Have a cigar, then.... This ’s on me.”
Doherty, in the background, listened sourly to the laughter of the deckmen, until he saw the size of the roll of greenbacks which “Shine” drew from his trousers’ pocket. Then he took a last hasty gulp of liquor and stood looking fixedly at the bottom of his empty glass. He put it down on the bar and elbowed his way to “Shine.”
“Have another, Shorty?”
“Naw. I’ve had enough.” He touched “Shine’s” elbow significantly and slid his eyes around in a sidewise stealthiness without moving his head. “Nittsy!” he said, out of the corner of his mouth.
“Shine” finished his glass, shook hands with the circle, and followed his friend to the gangway. “What’s up?”
Doherty seemed embarrassed. “Well, say,” he explained, under his breath, “they’re a gang o’ strong-arms. I was a-scared they’d get yuh loaded an’ shove yuh fer yer wad.”
“Shine” laughed. “I guess there’s no one in that bunch o’ ’bos could frisk me any.”
Doherty wriggled and grinned. “What’re yuh goin’ to do?”
“Me?” “Shine” leaned on the shutterof the gangway and spat at the water. “I’m goin’ to Coney an’ back.”
The smell of the past was sweet in his nostrils—that indescribable smell of an excursion steamboat’s lower deck—the bilgy smell of chill dampness, soiled paint and stale humanity. The churning of the paddle-wheels and the swish of water under the guard filled his ears with a remembered music. Hatless, coatless and in his bare feet, he took the sunshine on a guileless smile and watched the shores of Long Island gliding past in their old familiar way.
If he had not been blinded by the light and by his own generous emotions, he might have seen something suspicious below the manner of his former messmate, who peered at nothing with shaded eyes that shifted cunningly and a smile that came and went. But Dohertytalked in the voice of friendship, and “Shine” listened, without looking, basking in his own good nature.
They did not refer to the trouble with Captain Keighley. “Shine” felt himself guilty of having deserted from that quarrel, and avoided the mention of it. Doherty had long since concluded that the fire-boat crew did not intend to avenge his injuries; and he was waiting for an opportunity to make the “quitters” suffer for having failed him.
He explained that after he “quit handlin’ freight” for the Baltic-American line, he had gone “cappin’ fer a con man that was workin’ the hucks” on Coney—which is to say, he had been the confederate in a shell game. He had hoped to start a “graft” of some sort on the Island himself, but—as he put it plaintively—“a dip went through mefer all I’d put down, one night when I was paddin’ it in a doss-house on the Bow’ry.”
“Shine” laughed good-naturedly at this tale of another man’s misfortunes, as tickled with the sound of his Coney thieves’ slang as an exiled Highlander who hears his native Scotch.
Doherty licked his lips. “D’ yuh remember Goldy Simpson?”
“Do I?” “Shine” cried. “Me an’ Pikey Moffat—”
“Goldy’s back at Coney.”
“G’ wan! No!”
“Sure. He was up town yesterday lookin’ fer a ballyhoo man.”
“No!” “Shine” laughed immensely.
“By ——, I’d like to see him. I’d like t’ ask him if he remembers the time me an’ Pikey Moffat—”
“Why don’t yuh?” Doherty cut in.“Yuh c’u’d go back by trolley just as well as not.”
“Shine” looked doubtfully at his feet.
“Borry a pair o’ kicks an’ a hat in the foc’sle.”
“Shine” hesitated.
“Come on,” Doherty cried. “Let’s blow off up the island together. I’m lookin’ fer a job boostin’ er ballyhooin’ er somethin’.”
It was the voice of temptation sweetly tuned to “Shine’s” own inclination. He could, in fact, get back to the fire-boat more quickly by rail than by water; and even if he did not—if he “stopped over” long enough to call on “Goldy” and the “gang”—theLeowould carry back word of his accident in the forepeak, and he could invent more excuses to explain his further delay.
He said, “Let’s get the boots.” Andwhen theLeotied up at her pier on the Coney Island beach, he was helped ashore by Doherty and a deck-hand who had lent him a hat, a coat and a pair of shoes for two dollars.