A callous-looking grey morning was breaking in the Mersey. Now and then, when a bell-buoy heaved, the bell tolled. It was just like that—tolling, tolling them home. Another steamer, swathed in mist, surged along, behind and a little to the side, but rapidly drawing level. Captain Williamson, coming to the bridge and gazing astern at that steamer that was but half vapour, turned away with some agility after his scrutiny, for she was another cattleboat, and he wanted to be berthed first. Those members of the "Push," the morning's feeding being over, who strolled as far forward as to the bridge, heard him speaking down the tube to the engine room. Sounds of energetic shovelling came up from the stoke-hole; theGloryput on the pace a little more as the other ship came level. TheGloryled again. Captain Williamson, pacing the bridge, stirring up the morning haze, looked pleased. Again the other ship forged level, and he was heard chanting: "Shake her up! Shake her up!" The cattlemen took up the refrain, and addressed the deck on which they walked and double-shuffled, with "Shake her up! Shake her up!"
Again the cattleships forged level."Again the cattleships forged level."
"Oho!" shouted Cockney. "'Ere we are! Two stinks comin' 'ome!"
Michael leant on the rail and gazed at the rival ship with one eye, raised the shade slightly from the other and looked, to see if it improved.
"Iberian!" he said. "Iberian!" reading her name upon the bows.
"Hiberian," said Cockney.
"No, you're thinking of the Hibernian," replied Michael, still holding the shade up and peering, like a man testing new eye-glasses.
Cockney humped his shoulders and shot his face forward, then noticed Michael lifting that lid over his eye, and his mouth gave a twist of something like shame, and he turned away.
"It's the S dropped off," said the Inquisitive One. "I came over on her once—Siberian."
"Nothing of the kind!" said somebody else.
"Oh, gee!" said Mike. "You fellers are always scrapping."
"Well, what is it, then?" they asked him "What is her name?"
"Can't you rade?" asked Mike.
"Yes. But whatisher name?"
"It's the S dropped off," Charlie repeated.
Mike shook his shoulders and that baffled look was on his forehead as he turned from them.
"Oh, indade," he said. "Nobody knows anything about it; and everybody's talking. You think you know all about it; maybe I think I know a hell of a lot; but we all know damn-all. If you want to know, keep your mouth shut till we get ashore. They'll be paid off along of us likely, and you'll hear what the man at the Board of Trade Office calls them. She's another ould ship the same as us, and that's enough to be goin' on with."
"Well, we're forgin a'ead, any'ow," said Cockney.
Suddenly their feet tingled and the sound of the siren came. They looked round and up. The haze had not thickened again-it was not for that she whistled.
"She's whistling for the cattle-sheds," somebody said. One of the others explained that in a race like this the steamer that passed a certain point first was the first to be unloaded, and theGlorywas whistling to let them know ashore that she had done it. Some of the youngsters asked the older men if this was so, but they shook their heads; they did not know. They had often made the trip, but rules change. "Wait and see," was all that anybody could say.
A radiance began to come down into the haze, and the particles of moisture sparkled. A glory, a splendour, but ever so tenuous, ever so frail, was on the river-mist, a mist that waned fainter and fainter. The men lay along the rail and looked into the mist as though they sought to make sure of that evanescent radiance in it, to make sure that it was there, was not a trick of their eyes. The other steamer had now the air of giving up, fell behind, foot by foot, content to be second. One of the young men plucked Mike's elbow; he had been in a knot looking the other way.
"Is that right, Mike?" he asked, pointing to the long melancholy promenade that showed up ashore. "Is that where the toffs go to pick up the flash molls?"
"Oh, indade, I don't know," said Mike.
The Inquisitive One fell to chatting with Scholar, but asking questions in a way wholly different from that of the two catechists whom Scholar had desired to keep at arm's length—the Cardiff man, and the man from Fife in Scotland.
"Mike!" he said, suddenly. "Mike, Scholar has a mother!"
"Well, what about it?" asked Mike. "I expect ye had wan yersilf."
The Inquisitive One looked far off briefly, then a new thought came again to him.
"Got a father?" he asked, turning back to Scholar.
There was a look in Scholar's eyes that seemed somehow akin with that baffled look that showed in Mike's. He nodded. The Inquisitive One stood back, hands in pockets, and examined him with great interest.
"You're goinghome?" he said, accentuating the word. "You have a home?"
Mike turned away slightly. The Inquisitive One waggled his head sidewise as a sign that he wanted to draw Scholar aside again. Nobody who heard had jeered; some had pretended not to hear; only the chumming Welshman and the man from Dysart in Fife, standing together and apart, looked scorn, hate, contempt at these other two. Scholar was amazed to see that there were tears in the eyes of the Inquisitive One as he said:
"I often wonder what it's like going home. I've never had a father, and I've never had a mother. Straight! Will you be coming back on the ship?"—this suddenly, eagerly.
"I don't know. I think so."
"Tell me all about it when you come back, will yer? I would like to know."
But they were now being warped into the land, through channels between dock walls into docks, round the dock walls, sailors coming running along to hang over rope-fenders. The cattlemen kept quiet. There seemed to be no end to it. Men on shore caught ropes and ran, clattering and yelling. It was as if they were dragging for a corpse. Scholar felt a horror of the land, even as he had felt a horror of putting out to sea in that safe full of madmen, madmen that he felt now he would like to know more of—not probing like the Welshman, or the man from Fife, not even perhaps questioning personally like the Inquisitive One, but just sailing the seas with them after they had got over their cups. Suddenly they found that the ship was still. There was a rope ladder hanging over the other side. A broad-beamed little steamer lay there. The unruly members of the "Push," the shirk-works, were piling over the side and down the rope ladder.
"Come on, Mike!" someone called. "Ashore!"
"They're going to lave us to run the cattle ashore!" said Mike, disgusted, and he swung his legs over. Over they all went, one after the other, down the rope ladder, and jumped thence on to the bluff little steamer, where a man in a jersey stood looking at them curiously, staring; and another, a custom-house man, sat on the further bulwark watching the descent on the grin. The Man with the Hat came down, his wrist through the handles of his valise.
"Carry your bag?" jeered the younger men among the cattlemen below. "Carry your bag, mister?"
But cause for greater amusement was beheld higher up. There was Four Eyes, wrestling with a small trunk, round which he had made a rope fast, trying to lower it over the side. They whooped and cheered, they rocked with delight. "Lower away there!" they shouted. "All clear below! Drop it in the dock!" They advised him to make fast to the capstan. As he struggled with the box they suggested that he should "hail them two fellers on the bridge," and ask them to give him a hand—namely the pilot and the skipper. The face of Rafferty appeared over the rail; he gnashed his teeth, he yelped at them.
"It ain't our place to run the cattle ashore," they called back. Others looked a little forward, turning their heads, for a sharp whistle had sounded thence. Candlass, standing on the top of a sheep-pen, raised thumb and forefinger, and beckoned gently with the finger—then, with his head, gave an inclination inboard.
"Come on youse, then," said Mike. "I knew youse was wrong."
The man in the jersey, who had been standing like a squat effigy, moved to a rope by which this little craft was moored alongside, pressed feet to the bulwark, hung on to the rope so that the great hull of theGlory(she looked a massive thing again) loomed close and they could stretch out to the rope ladder. Rafferty above hauled in Four Eyes' trunk with great vehemence, that "poor feller" standing by like a great child watching the rough-handling of a toy. They swarmed on deck again. Candlass came aft and stood beside them.
"Stand by, men," he said. "Just wait till we get alongside here."
The ship began to move on again, towards a sound of lowing of cattle and shouting of men, and Candlass walked forward, left them, and stood chatting amidships with Rafferty. There appeared suddenly, running into their midst, swarming on deck like rats, several grimy stokers, looking for friends, it would appear, among the cattlemen. Mike eyed the little knots that drew aside.
"If you want your razor, Scholar," he said quietly, "keep your eye on these fellows. Whoever's got it up here will very likely slip it to one of his friends in the black hole, for fear of you putting a copper on them."
The Inquisitive One, standing by, heard the word "copper" and flinched.
"What you say about a copper?" he asked anxiously.
"Now then, some of you fellows," cried Candlass.
"Come on, you fellows," shouted Rafferty.
The willing ones followed them; the shirkers remained, and were not worried. Indeed all were not required—they would be in each other's way. They only went below now to knock out the divisions between the pens with a crow-bar or two, or the back of an axe, or whatever implement came handy; and as they were so employed the shore-push thrust in their gangways and swarmed up them.
A couple of men that Mike called "them toffs" were speaking to Candlass at the top of the gangway that stretched to the main deck. They paid no heed to the men who had brought the cattle across, or at least little heed. One of them, once, while talking, roved his eyes from Candlass along the deck, looked at this cattleman, looked at that, half absently; saw Scholar, seemed for a moment to be more interested in him than in the threesome chat; looked then at Mike, up and down, appeared to measure him as if he thought: "Jove! There's a big fellow!" nodded "Yes, yes," to Candlass, looked at Mike's face again with an expression faintly reminiscent of that which had showed on Smithers' face now and then when he stood beside the wicket of the little movable office in the back of the shed at Montreal as the Hard Cases trooped up to sign on. Mike bent down, lifted a board, and stepped forward to a great steer that thrust its head, and its great long horns, over the front barricade. The "toff" looked at him, alert, frowning; but all the movements of these Hard Cases seemed belligerent to strangers, and Mike might not be going to rough-handle the brute. So he merely watched, intent. Mike took the end of the board and scrubbed the steer under its chin as it raised its great head, like a cat wanting to be scratched; it turned its head round and over slowly, to have the office well done all round.
"Well, bejabbers, this is your last scratch! You're a fine looking baste. You might have had a worse trip!" Mike addressed the steer, that baffled look on his face, and his eyes kindly.
When they did find themselves, anon, rightly upon the shore, they clustered there, masterless men. Jack asked: "What are we waiting here for?" His partner said: "I don't know," and swore. Somebody moved away, saying: "Come on, come on—what are we waiting here for?" and a few followed him.
"Where are you going?" he was asked.
He admitted that he did not know. A long, thin, grey-faced man drew nigh and stood beside the knot. Somebody took him into the conversation, half turning to him, but not looking at him, unaware that a stranger had joined them, and he answered, but not eagerly, quite casually. Thus he dropped into the talk: what kind of a trip had they had? what were they hanging around for? They didn't know. One of them asked if he was So-and-So, of Such-and-Such a boarding house? He admitted he was. Was he there still? He merely nodded—it was all very casual, but it seemed settled soon, seemed to be in the air somehow that they had arranged that they might as well bunk at his boarding house as anywhere else.
Then Candlass appeared on the wharf, wearing a white collar instead of the blue-and-white striped rubber one of the trip. Some of the men approached him, and he turned in his walk as a housemaster, one somewhat feared as a rule but respected, turns to hear what some boys would say to him, who have the air of wondering if they should approach at all on the day before breakup. He answered gently, easily, seemed to suggest by his manner that he would see them through as well as possible, but that even he was in the clutch of circumstance. It was with the hint of a shrug and with a little toss of the head and a half smile that he left them. The crowd formed afresh around those who had spoken to him.
"What does he say? What does he say?"
"Well," said Mike, sticking a hand under his belt, "we may as well drift up that way, then." "That way" was the Board of Trade Office.
"See you later on," said the boarding house man.
"Are you going away?" asked somebody, who perhaps felt homeless.
"Oh, I'll be back—I'll meet you up there."
"What does he say? What does he say?" He had drifted away.
"Who the hell is he?" asked one with a mania for trying to make others quarrelsome, and then backing out. The older hands filed off; the others followed. The Inquisitive One saw their resemblance to a procession as they drew aside to let a traction engine go past, a rattling, smoking, devil-waggon, pulling a string of lorries laden with swaying beer kegs. He took out his mouth organ. Rattling and deafening the engine and drays quivered by, the men shouting: "Oh, beer!" or: "How would you like to get all them inside you?" The procession went on, the irresponsible tail-end of it cake-walking, and the mouth organ, with full tremolo, in full blast, made music for it with the air of a bottle-song of the halls.
The "Push" came to a halt before the Board of Trade building. The less juvenile, and the elders, looked broodingly at it. The younger fry sparred, and danced, and fought for possession of the mouth organ. Now and then a man who leant against a wall of the neighbourhood would catch the eye of one of the youths in the crowd and nod amiably, and the man nodded at would either look away quickly, or would tauten his legs and chuck his chest a little, look up the wall behind the man who had pretended to be an acquaintance, slow, casual, and so extricate himself. Now and then somebody who really knew one of the group would approach, and all would look at him shrewdly to see what his intentions might be.
A voice came: "You're there, are you?" It was Rafferty. Cheerily he was asked when the pay-off would be. "Oh, not for some time yet," he said. One man announced a wish that they could get something to eat; and that set them all a-going with their wishes. A few had a coin or two left. It was for something to eat that the Inquisitive One raised his plaintive voice.
"I have half-a-crown or so," said Scholar. "Come and let us have breakfast. Come and have some breakfast, Mike," he added, turning. Two others ran close, approaching him in a kind of cake-walk, inviting themselves. "I don't think I've enough money," said Scholar.
"We'll stop here," said Mike, wheeling round again.
"Come on," answered Scholar.
"No!"
"Iamhungry," said the Inquisitive One.
Scholar and he headed for a cheap restaurant, but Mike refused to accompany them and jeered at those who showed signs of intending to follow, so that they subsided. The man behind the counter nodded pleasantly to them and wished them good morning, and the early waitress rustled after them to a marble-topped table. The Inquisitive One felt nervous, but Scholar's suggestion of ham and eggs made his eyes bulge. Large cups of coffee were brought, rolls of butter, and the ham and eggs.
"I can do with this," murmured Charles.
The girl waited. Scholar wondered why; then, even as it struck him that perhaps he was expected to pay before eating, she turned away.
"Ain't yer goin' to give her the money?" asked Charlie in a worried voice.
"Oh!" said Scholar. "Oh, of course, that's what she was waiting for."
Charlie looked at him a trifle suspiciously. Was it possible that this man was one of those swell crooks in embarrassed circumstances? Was he beginning his daring fancy tricks and games of bluff the moment he got ashore? Here was out of such company for him! The girl was walking over to the man behind the counter, he looking up expectant, for she had evidently something to say.
"I'd better pay you," called Scholar, and she came back smiling.
"It's the rule," she said. "I was just going to ask the boss, seeing you—thank you," for he put the coin in her hand.
They took up knife and fork, and as they did so the girl returned to say, quite sweetly: "Didn't notice. The manager says this is an American coin."
"The manager says this is an American coin.""The manager says this is an American coin."
Charlie sat back and went limp; he looked from one to the other, mouth open.
"So it is," said Scholar easily. "I wasn't thinking. I haven't got anything else, either—I have only American money. Still, that's the same as two shillings; that will be all right, won't it?"
Charlie pushed his plate forward on the table, pushed his coffee cup forward. The girl departed, and the manager called: "I'm not supposed to take foreign money, but that's all right. Have your breakfasts. The money-changing places aren't open yet."
"By gee, you'll get run in!" whispered the Inquisitive One. "Get run in!" He pushed the dishes still farther from him.
"Thank you very much," answered Scholar, looking to the manager. "Perhaps you could send somebody out to get the money changed." He smiled cheerfully. "You don't know us, and we might run off."
"Oh, that's all right—there's a place just across the street," said the man behind the counter. (The girl put down the fifty-cent piece beside him.) "Just arrived?" he asked affably.
Charlie kept gibbering: "Can't eat! Can't eat! My appetite's gone! I feel stalled before I start. Couldn't touch it. Might have got run in. Might have got me run in!" and he flared up angry for a moment. "That's what you might have done to me."
The girl looked at him, pensive, having caught part of this. She moved nearer to the manager, and they whispered; Charlie eyed them.
"I'm going to slide," he murmured, and half rose off his chair.
The girl and the manager drew apart, and the latter took up the thread again.
"Just come off a ship?" he enquired.
"Yes, a cattle boat," replied Scholar.
"Don't tell him which one," whispered the Inquisitive One. And then, next moment: "No, tell him, tell him, because he'll find out, and it'll make it worse."
Scholar, applying himself to his breakfast, said: "We've just come off theGlory."
"TheGlory? Oh, that's one of the Saint Lawrence Transport, isn't it?"
Charlie rose from his chair, and then sat down again. The manager suddenly dived from behind his counter and ran outside. The Inquisitive One eyed the door. He wondered if it might not be better to rush now; but the manager's voice could be heard outside, and then he dived in again.
"Where's that—oh, yes, here!" and he lifted the fifty-cent piece from the counter and handed it to a red-faced man who followed him.
"Perhaps it's bad!" moaned Charlie, and again he looked suspiciously at Scholar.
Relief showed in Charlie's eyes as the red-faced man put the coin in his pocket, handing the manager some other money in its place.
"Now you can eat your breakfast," said Scholar to Charlie.
"Me? No, can't touch it. Can't eat to-day." The relief was no better for him than the ordeal, so far as raising an appetite went.
"Your com-ish?" said the manager, smiling to the red-faced man.
"That's all right. You can give me another lump in my tea when I send over. Good morning."
"Good morning."
The manager came over to give the change himself, to chat about the weather, and the Atlantic, to ask if there had been any cattle lost coming over, how many head they had, so on, making pleasant conversation.
"You don't have an appetite," he said to the Inquisitive One.
"No," Charlie gurgled. And for all the friendly "good morning" of the manager when they did rise to go, and the friendly nod of the waitress, great was his relief to be out in the street again. He gave Scholar to understand that they could congratulate themselves on getting off like that, that it couldn't happen twice, and as Scholar continued to talk soothingly, the Inquisitive One became declamatory, and anon vituperative.
Those of the "Push" that still hung around the Board of Trade doors saw, on the return of these two, that there had been some friction. But again the crowd there began to gather and increase, and everybody had something to say. They hung about for hours; now and then somebody passed by and cried "Ahoy!" to some member and carried him off for a drink. At last one of them caught sight of Captain Williamson, with cheery red face and rolling gait, entering the Board of Trade offices. Another group of men formed—such another as this from theGlory—"cattle-stiffs." Some sailors hove in sight, in stiff hats and stiff, and strangely creased, new-brushed shore-going clothes, and smoked their little short pipes, coming to an anchor near by, and standing in a circle to talk quietly. But at last Candlass appeared, hand up and beckoning, and the "Push," subduing its voices, came up to the swinging glass doors, passed through, some manfully, others with a look left and right as though on guard lest the place might prove to be a trap. The big floor space seemed to worry them; it made their foot steps sound so loud and echoing. The long counter, broad and shiny, seemed rather magnificent; the windows suggested a church, the wire netting a cage.
"There's the skipper," said one to another, and they looked through to where Captain Williamson sat. They were pleased with him for having won the race with theIberian,Siberian, or whatever it might be called—the rival. They spoke in low voices. Candlass shepherded them, one at a time, to get their money and sign off. When the Man with the Hat, who had waited about alone who knows where, appeared there were glances of hard interest. Safely off the ship somebody had let out that he had hazed the cook, though everybody thought that the part of the rumour relating to a revolver was by way of superfluous frilling to the story. They looked at him with interest, somewhat as they would look at a boxer if the news passed down the street that he was coming along, or as they would stand outside the prison where a murderer awaited execution till the flag went up. One by one they stepped forward, and Candlass gave them "the wink." They felt themselves in his hands, as schoolboys with an under-master, when there has to be an interview with the Head. Soon, however, they got into the swing and Candlass stood aside. Michael, retiring from the counter with his hand full of shillings, stepped up to him.
"Will you do something for me, Mr. Candlass?" he said. "Will you keep half of this for me until we get back to Montreal?" He divided off the half, but it seemed too much. Present needs were surely greater than future. "Well, I don't know—perhaps ye might take for me——" he went on slowly.
"Better let me keep the half, Michael," said Candlass. "You'll only drink it."
"Indeed you're right," replied Michael. "I'll only drink it."
Cockney stepped up.
"It's a good idear," he said. "Will yer do the sime fer me, please?"
"I will," replied Candlass. "And look here—I want you two to promise me something." They looked at him. "I want you to promise me that there'll be no more fighting ashore between you. Let bygones be bygones."
Cockney made a motion of spitting on his hand and held it out to Michael, who took it, and looking at Candlass said: "That's a promise, Mr. Candlass."
"How's the eye?" asked Candlass, and looked, putting a hand on little Michael's head and raising the blind with a thumb. "It might have been worse," he said. "It might have been very bad."
"Perhaps we both 'ad a drop," said Cockney.
"Quite so, quite so," agreed Candlass sadly, yet severely.
The youth who had asked for his shaving water for three mornings in succession got the length of the door, which an official held open; then he turned round.
"Rafferty!" he called.
Rafferty came back from looking into nothingness with his queer red eyes, standing apart; and the youth, putting his lips together, made a sound of contempt with them, and then dived from the place. Rafferty looked away again; one or two of the men grinned sympathetically; one or two gave a "Huh!" as who should say: "Hehadto do something like that!"
Mike, scratching the side of his head and pushing up his cap, had a troubled look in his eyes, glanced at the door, said something about impudence, and then turned to Scholar, who had now taken his money and received his discharge.
"You're going home then, Scholar?" he said, heavily. "Do you go far?"
"Newcastle."
"Well, well, you'd better not stop here to-night. You'll be coming back?"
"I'm not sure."
Troubled, Mike looked at him.
"If ye do, Mike can teach ye the ropes. Don't forget. Will ye have a drink before——"
Scholar looked at the floor, then up at Mike's face.
"It wouldn't just be one, Mike," he said.
The baffled look showed again.
"You're right—another on the top of it, and so on. Men that's friends will start quarrelling in liquor." Mike looked as if he had much to say as they drifted towards the door. The tall shepherd from the boarding house was outside waiting for them. Somebody said: "We're going to see Frenchy off in the train." Another announced: "Scholar's taking a train, too." Mike blew a deep breath. He turned round and looked at them as though they worried him, shaking his head upwards, and they fell back.
"I'll not be after coming with you," he said. "Them fellers will be cheerin' and screamin.' Wemaymeet again, or we maynot. It's all bloody strange," and he held out his hand. They did not pump-handle; they grasped hands warmly. Each felt that the other had much in common with him, but they had need of an interpreter.
"Well, so long, Scholar. Luck with ye, and God bless ye."
"So long, Mike."
THE END
WOODS & SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON, N.