Don Quixote Kieran, Pump-Man

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Title:     Don Quixote Kieran, Pump-Man
Author: James B. Connolly [More Titles by Connolly]

He came into the outer office of the great oil company, and through the half-open door of his private office the new superintendent observed the stimulating style of his entrance. Looking for work, no doubt of that, but not looking like a man who was apologizing for it; and that in itself was a joy to the new official.

No hesitating--"Please, sir, who is the gentleman,"--no timid waiting on any languid understrapper's pleasure for this one. A short pause; his dark eyes swept the room from wall to wall; his black head bent respectfully and not without appreciation toward the pretty stenographer; and then, before the leisurely office boy thought it time to rise and ask what he wanted, he was at the rail-gate. And when the gate did not at once swing open, he stepped lightly over it; and singling out from all the furtively smiling males the head clerk, he charged straight across the floor toward that important person's desk.

And the head clerk, who was also the head wit, took a peek at him coming, and very politely said, "Pray be seated?" And, also very politely, "From whence came you and what willst thou?"

The chuckling heads bobbed above the rows of desks. The head clerk himself had to gaze window-ward to smother his smile.

"Gramercy, kind sir--"

"Gramercy? Eh, what? Gramercy?"

"Gramercy Park--you know where Gramercy Park is? Or didn't you ask me where I came from?"

"Oh-h-Oh-h, yes."

"Of course, and I'm after a berth as pump-man on your oil ship sailing to-day for the Gulf."

"And what, may I ask, do you know of our class of ships?"

"Only what I've heard--most modern oil-tankers afloat, and I'd like to try one out--and sail the Gulf again, if you'll give me the chance."

"M-m--what are your qualifications?"

"Qualifications? For pump-man on an oil-tanker?"

"Pump-man--yes. And on an oil-tanker. I'm not hiring a rough rider, or a policeman, or an aeroplanist--just a pump-man."

Through his open door the new superintendent caught the wink which his head clerk directed at the second clerk. And caught it so easily that the thought came to him that to share in the humor of the head clerk may have been one of the recreations of his predecessor.

"What has been your experience with marine machinery? What were your last three or four places?"

"My last three or four? Well, one was being second-assistant engineer on a government collier from the Philippines with a denaturalized skipper, and for purser a slick up-state New Yorker; and both of 'em at the old game--grafting off the grub allowance. And that's bad."

"Eh--what's bad?"

"Grafting off the grub. Men quit a ship for poor grub quicker than they do for poor pay. For a week after we hit San Francisco I didn't get any further away from the dining-room of the nearest hotel--well, than"--he turned suddenly--"than that fellow there is from here--that fat, knock-kneed chap there who seems to have so much to say about me." The second clerk, who was also the second head wit, yelped like a suddenly squelched concertina and was quiet.

The new-comer, after a grave study of the knock-kneed one's person, resumed his narrative. "Then oiler on a cattle steamer. Ever been on a cattleman?"

"Huh!" The head clerk was scowling tremendously.

"No? You ought to try one sometime. Some are all right, but some are"--he looked sidewise at the stenographer--"well, no matter. One night two sweet-tempered, light-complexioned coal-passers hit me together, one with a shovel, the other with a slice-bar. It was the slice-bar, I think, that got me. I didn't see it coming--or going either--but probably it was the slice-bar." He bent his neck and parted the heavy black hair. A white welt showed through the hair.

The head clerk flashed an enlightening wink toward the second head clerk; but the second clerk, seeming to be less interested than formerly, the wink was flashed over to the stenographer; but as she, too, seemed preoccupied, the head clerk, rather less buoyantly, inquired, "And what did you do to the two coal-passers?"

"For what I did to them--after I came to--I had to jump into the Mersey and swim ashore. British justice, you know. Inflexible!--especially to a foreigner who cracks a couple of domestic skulls."

"And then?"

"English navy."

The head clerk began to flash again. "And what, may I arsk, was wrong--haw, haw!--wrong with the sair-vice?"

The new-comer almost smiled. "The grub, for one thing. My word, the grub! Blow me for a bleedin' Dutchman, but I couldn't go the grub; y'know. An' a man's a man, with a man's 'eart an' feelin's, even if 'e's nowt but a sailor, ain't he now? You're bloody well right 'e is. But I took a fall out of a submarine before I quit. 'Ave you seen 'em--the little black chaps wot goes down an' comes up like bloomin' little poppusses?"

The head clerk unobtrusively relapsed into his every-day speech. "And weren't they exciting enough for you?"

"The one I was in was. But you see, sir, she sunk one d'y an' all 'ands with 'er."

"Evidently you didn't sink with her. Or maybe you're amphibious?"

"Amphibious? Oh, I s'y now, but that's a good one. My word! But you was jokin', wasn't you, sir? Of course you was. No, hi 'appened to be ashore that d'y, sir. A mistike, sir, you see. But such a turn of wit as you 'ave, sir!"

The head clerk suddenly shed his smile. "Never mind about my wit. What then? You deserted?"

"Not hexactly, sir. I was hofficially dead, sir. Ought to 'ave been at the bottom, sir. O yes, sir. An' when I comes along an' declares myself, they said I was a himposter--himposin' on honest people, sir--mikin' a 'ero o' myself, sir, as bein' the only man to escipe, sir. An' so I comes aw'y--in a 'urry, sir. But if I was married, sir, my widow could 'ave 'ad 'er pension, sir. Yes, sir, 'er pension."

"That's a queer thing."

"Do you think so, sir?"

The head clerk unexpectedly bounced up and down in his chair. "See here, don't imagine you can make fun of me, because you can't."

"Now don't get grouchy. When you pull out a cigar and start to light it, don't blame a man looking on if he thinks you don't object to smoking. Anyhow, after my navy experience I came back home and landed on an East River tug. Said I struck the busy season. Must have struck a busy concern, too. From daylight to ten, eleven at night--once in a while a night lapping over. Nothing doing but work. I don't mind work, but this indulging a lawless passion for it--not for mine. I've had three months of that, and I think I'm due for a change. And don't you think that's enough autobiography to qualify me for pump-man on an oil-tanker?"

The head clerk yawned prodigiously, and hummed, and whistled, looked out of the window, and by and by found time to say, "you can leave your name. And sometime possibly"--and just then the buzzer clicked, and the applicant saw him disappear into the private office.

* * * * *

It was only the new superintendent's second day, and to the head clerk he still seemed an unaggressive sort, not much to look at, and, so far, not much to say. A clever man ought to be able to handle him. And yet, as the head clerk was crossing the floor of the private office, the eye of the new superintendent never looked away. Yes, he did have a puzzling eye.

"Close the door, Mr. Grump. Why not ship that man for that berth? He seems competent."

"The captain of the Rapidan said he had a man in mind for the place, sir."

"M-h-h. And something of a martinet, isn't he, this Rapidan captain?"

"Something, sir."

"M-h-h. But even so, he probably won't object to my naming one man of his crew. And I would like it if you would sign this man."

"The captain of the Rapidan has always selected all his own crew, sir." The head clerk had rested both hands, with fingers spread, on his chief's desk. His chief making no reply, the head clerk added: "And he rather resents interference from the office."

The superintendent was playing idly with a paper knife. His gaze seemed to be directed to the lower buttons of his head clerk's waistcoat. "Interference?" he repeated. "Interference? Mr. Grump, you have a reputation for humor, or so I judge. I've been listening to you trying to bedevil that man out there, but I'm afraid your humor is a little on the slap-stick order. And so"--the superintendent raised his head--"if I use a club on you, instead of the point of a rapier, I hope you won't think I do it out of natural brutality."

Their eyes met. The head clerk straightened from shoulder to heel. "And now, this is not a request; it is an order: Sign that man."

"Yes, sir."

"And Mr. Grump, why did you ask all those questions of a man you had no notion of shipping?"

"Why, sir, I meant no harm by that, sir. All kinds come here looking for berths on our ships, and some of them are rather queer ones, you know, sir, and we like to have a little fun with them."

"Have fun with that man? I wish I had your intellectual nerve."

"You know him, sir? If I had known--"

"I don't know him. I saw him and listened to him, as you did. But let me tell you something, Mr. Grump. You're paid $5,000 a year here, and presumably you know your business. I get several times that. Presumably I, too, know my business. But when you or I reach a stage where we can have fun with that man out there, then you and I won't have to rest content with our relatively subordinate and unimportant executive positions in the Northern and Southern Oil Company."

"Subordinate positions, sir!"

"Exactly. And Mr. Grump?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why is it that good men don't seem to stay long on some of our ships, especially on the Rapidan?"

"I couldn't say, sir."

"No? Too bad you didn't take the trouble to find out during all the years you've been here. Possibly I can find out. I'll take passage on the Rapidan this trip. But say nothing about it to anybody, mind. If the captain wishes to know something more of his passenger, say that it is a friend of the third or fourth vice-president, or of one of the directors, or of the office boy's, or the stenographer's, or anybody at all, taking a little sea trip for his health. And his name--" He picked up the telephone directory, inserted the blade of the paper knife, opened the book, and laid the knife across the page. "Noyes. Noyes sounds all right. Tell him the passenger's name is Noyes. And that's all for now, except that you sign that man."

"Yes, sir." The reorganized head clerk clicked his heels, wheeled, marched to his desk, and without delay signed John Kieran as pump-man for the Gulf voyage of the oil ship Rapidan.

II

It lacked two minutes to sailing time, and the passenger was in the cabin mess-room, when he heard the exclamation. "Here he comes now."

He looked through the air-port. Out on the deck was a huge fellow gazing up the dock. The passenger, who knew the big man for the boson, gazed up the dock also and saw that it was the pump-man coming; and he was singing cheerily as he came:

"Our ship she was alaborin' in the Gulf o' Mexico,
The skipper on the quarter--"

Usually it is only the drunks who come over the side of an oil-tanker singing, but this was no drunk. Drunks generally make use of all the aids to navigation when they board a ship. Above all, they do not ignore the gang-plank. But this lad wasn't going a hundred feet out of his way for any gang-plank. He hove his suit-case aboard, made a one-handed vault from dock to deck (and from stringpiece to rail was high as his shoulder), and when he landed on deck it was like a cat on his toes; and like a cat he was off and away, suit-case in hand, while those of the crew who had only seen him land were still wondering where he dropped from.

The big man plainly did not like the style of him at all. "Here you!" he bellowed, "who the hell are you?"

And the new-comer ripped out, "And who the hell are you that wants to know?"

"Who'm I? Who'm I? I'll show yer bloody well soon who I am."

"Well, show me."

"Show yer?"

"Yes, you big sausage, show me."

"Show yer? Show yer?" The big man peered around the ship. Surely it was a mirage.

At the very first whoop from the big man the pump-man had stopped dead, softly set down his suit-case, and waited. Now he stepped swiftly toward the big man. And to the passenger, looking and listening from the cabin mess-room, it looked like the finest kind of a battle; but just then the captain came up the gang-plank calling out, "Cast off those lines. And don't fall asleep over it, either." The deck force scattered to carry out his orders. The pump-man picked up his suit-case and went on to his quarters.

Next morning (the ship by now well down the Jersey coast and the passenger on the bridge by the captain's invitation) again was heard the carolling voice:

"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--'"

that far when the big man's hoarse bass interrupted, "Say you, what about that Number Seven tank?"

"--Says he, 'My bucko boys, it's asurely goin' to blow'"

The pump-man paused, inclined his head, set one hand back of his ear, and asked, "And what about Number Seven tank? And speak up, son, so I can hear you."

"Speak up!" The big man roared to the heavens. "Speak up! Don't tell me to speak up. Did yer clean that tank out?"

"No, I didn't clean it out."

"Yer didn't? And why in hell didn't yer?"

"Because I don't have to. But I put a couple of men to work and saw that they cleaned it out. And it was done before you were out of your warm bunk this morning."

"Who's that big fellow?" The passenger put the question to the captain.

"That's my bosun--and a good one."

"And the other? Know anything of him?"

"The singing one? Nothin', except he's the new pump-man. And I can see right now it won't be many hours afore the bosun'll beat his head off."

"You think he will?"

"I know he will. Why, look at him--the size of him, and solid's a rock."

The passenger took another look over the top of the bridge canvas. He was surely a big man; and under his thin sleeveless jersey, surely a solid man. And the pump-man, in his skimpy, badly-fitting dungarees, though of good height, did not look to be much more than half the other's bulk.

"That same bosun's beat up more men than any shipping agency ever kept a record of. That's Big Bill. And if you'd ever travelled on oil-tankers, you'd 'a' heard of him. He's a whale. Take another look at him, Mr. Noyes."

Noyes took another look. The boson surely was a tremendously muscled man. He was knobbed with muscle. But Noyes had his own opinion about the two men, and he hazarded it now.

"But he's a wonderfully quick-moving fellow, that pump-man, captain. And he's surely got his nerve with him. Look at him leap across that open hatch! If he fell short he'd get a thirty-foot drop and break his neck."

"And I wish he would break his neck. And so can a kangaroo hop around, but you wouldn't pick a kangaroo to fight a bull buffalo. You'll find out the difference, if ever he tackles my bosun. And no fear my bosun won't get him. He'll get him, you see. And when they come together I'll take good care there's no interruption."

"But why does the bosun hound him so? This man was no sooner aboard than the bosun began to crowd him."

"Did he? And perhaps you think the bosun of an oil-tanker's goin' to hand a man a type-written letter every time he wants to have a word with him. He's a good bosun. He knows his business, and he saves me a lot of trouble."

And what the captain did not say, but what Noyes imagined he saw in his eye, was: "And I'll be telling you pretty soon to keep to yourself your opinion of ship's matters."

When Noyes went to his room that night, it was for a stay of two days. More than a year now since he had been to sea, and the weather passing Hatteras had been bad. But now it was the fourth day out, and Hatteras was far astern, and the ship was plunging easily southward, with the white sandy shore of Florida abeam. A fine, fair day it was, with the Caribbean breeze pouring in through the air-port. The passenger shaved and washed and got into his clothes. Above him he could hear the captain dressing down somebody. He stepped out on deck.

It was two sailors who had complained of the grub, and he had made short work of their complaint. "I'll give you what grub I please. And that's good grub." That and more, and drove the two sailors, with their dinners on their tin mess-plates, down to the deck.

Noyes, who remembered that the company allowed fifty cents a day per man for grub, took a look and a whiff of the protested rations as the men went by. "Phew!" He ascended to the bridge. The captain turned to him. "Did you see those two? Complaining of the grub, mind you. What do they know of grub? In the hovels they came from they never saw good grub."

Noyes made no answer. He was interested just then in the pump-man, who now came strolling along and presently overtook the protesting sailors. The better to observe proceedings, Noyes took his station on the chart bridge aft. "And did you fellows think that any polite game of conversation up on the bridge was going to get you a shift of rations?" the pump-man was saying. "Don't you know that what he saves out of the ship's allowance goes into his own pocket? What you fellows want to do is to go and scare the cook to death--or half way to it. If it's only for a couple of days, it'll help. Here, let's go back and shake him up. Besides, we might as well start something to make a fellow smile. Most morbid packet ever I was in. You'd think it was a crime to laugh on her. Come on."

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."

The swimming head kept falling backward toward the ground. And for Kieran, as he felt his enemy weaken, the purple lights were flashing again. The call of battle was ringing in his ears; came back to him the memory of more careless days, when he lived for this kind of thing. After all, what was life but a means whereby to give one's spirit play? And yet again--and yet--was he no more than a brute himself? What was the use? What good would it all do? And suddenly he loosed his grip, and the inert body of the bosun rolled down the tarpaulined hatch and onto the steel deck.

Noyes found himself gasping, almost as if he were in the fight himself. Then he noted that Kieran had raised his hand and was addressing the crew. "Holdup! You said the fight would settle it. Mind your words now--fair play for one against you all. Fair play, I say," and they might have scattered before this blazing, fighting pump-man in the full lust of his power but for the carpenter, who poised a hammer to throw. "What! you would!" yelled Kieran. A leap, a pass, and his fist smashed into the lowering face. Over keeled the carpenter, a tall man, like a falling spar.

"Put that man in irons!" Noyes jumped at the voice. The captain was leaning over the rail beside him.

IV

"Irons?" The pump-man's head went into the air. For a moment he stood poised on the hatch like a statue. "Irons?" His face paled and hardened and his arms stiffened; but instantaneously, as half a dozen reached out to seize him, he ducked and twisted and side-stepped, and two, who could not be avoided, he knocked swiftly out of his way. He cracked a fist into one face, then the other. There was no malice in it; they simply barred his way to freedom. He leaped from combing to combing of the open hatches. It was thirty feet to the bottom of any one of these empty tanks, and those who followed did so at creeping speed.

He was clear of the mob. A light bound and he was on the ship's rail beside the after-rigging.

The captain, leaning as far out as the chart deck would allow, shook a raging arm at Kieran. "You'll assault, you'll batter my men right and left, will you, you crazy mutineer?"

"Don't call me a mutineer, captain--I've disobeyed no order."

"You are a mutineer. I declare you one now. And you'll go into irons."

"You'll never put me in irons."

"You'll go into irons or you'll go over the side."

"Well, maybe I'll go over the side. But before I go, if I have to go, I'll have a word to say. You've been trying to break my nerve from the beginning. I know your kind that bully and starve your crew, and won't have a man on your ship that you can't bully and starve. And so you set your bully bosun to do me--do me to death, if he had to. And when he's not clever enough nor able enough, you'd put me in irons--in irons here on the high seas--out here where no law can get you!"

The first officer was now on the deck beneath the pump-man. "You'd better come down, Kieran. It will be the safest way in the end."

"Mr. Brown, you're a good officer, and I don't want to cross you, but you're not going to put me in irons."

The ship was rolling gently. Kieran rested one hand lightly, by way of balance, on a stay, and kicked his shoes overboard. "A step nearer, Mr. Brown, and I go after the shoes."

"But it's five miles to the Florida shore, Kieran, and alive with sharks. You'd never make it. Come on now."

"No. Five miles or fifty, I'll have a try at it."

Noyes now laid a warning hand on the captain's arm. "Are you going to insist on putting that man in irons?"

"I am. And stand clear of me, you."

"If you try to, he'll jump overboard."

"And if he does, what of it?"

"If he does, there'll be a bad time ahead for you."

"There will? There's liable to be a bad time for you right now. Do you know you have no rights on this ship unless I say so? Don't you know I can put you in irons, too--that's marine law--if I feel like it?"

"I know what maritime law is. And that's the devil of it when there's a brute on the bridge. You can put me in irons if you want to, but I don't think you will."

"So?" sneered the captain. "I won't? And why not?"

"Because I'm no friendless seafarer. And also because--here's my card. Read it. It's the card of your boss, the man who can hire or fire you, or any other man or officer of this line. And I don't have to give you a reason unless it pleases me. But I'll give a reason at the right time--in your case. And the reason will leave you where you'll never again set foot on the deck of any ship of this line or of a good many other lines."

The captain had set his back to the rail and bared his teeth. Noyes, thinking he was about to spring, braced his feet and waited. Noyes himself was no angelic-looking creature at the moment. His jaw seemed to shoot forward, his eyes to contract and recede.

"And so that's who you are, is it? And you'd break me?"

"Break you, yes. And perhaps put you in jail before I'm done with you. Now will you put him in irons?"

The captain did not spring. He walked to his room instead. And he gave out no order just then; but soon the mess-boy came out and whispered to the first officer, and the first officer said, "Kieran, you're to return to duty," and pocketed his irons and called off the men.

It was an hour after the fight. Kieran had had time to clean up, and now, with the passenger, he was pacing the long gangway.

"And would you have gone over the side?" the passenger had asked.

"I guess I'd had to, wouldn't I?"

"And would you have reached shore?"

"Why not? Five miles--it's not much in smooth water."

"But the sharks?"

"Sharks? Black boys in West Indian ports will dive all day among them for coppers. Sharks and whales--writers of sea stories certainly ought to pension them. There may have been a shark who once made a meal off a sailor, but let you or me drop over the side, and if there's one anywhere near, he wouldn't stop racing till he was a mile away, and if any harmless slob of a whale ever killed a sailor, be sure he did it through fright. But that's no matter. What does matter, though"--Kieran halted and faced the passenger--"are the men who did go over the side, and not within swimming distance of any pleasant sandy beach either. 'Tisn't every protesting seaman who finds the boss of the line on deck to back him up. And, what's harder, how about the men who never had the choice of going over the side? And think of the poor creatures who got so that in time they didn't even want to go over the side, who might have grown into honest, free men, but who, instead of that, learned only to live for the day when they too would have the power to make their inferiors stand around and cringe and whine."

They paced the length of the deck twice before Kieran spoke again.

"They wonder at the decay of our merchant marine. I wonder did they ever stop to think of what men--seamen--think of the service? In the days of sailing ships a man going to sea met with real danger and hardship, and they developed courage and skill and character of some kind. What training does he get to take the place of that now? He's a hand nowadays, a helper, a lumper--not a sailor--on a great big hulk to which disaster is almost impossible."

"But disasters do happen."

"They do, but what is the truth about them? Nine out of ten of them have a disgraceful cause. But the public doesn't hear of that, because the public doesn't go to sea--except as a saloon passenger. The public gets its story from the steamship company's office--always, and you know what kind of a story they put out--put out through newspapers that carry their advertising. You know what that chief clerk or that second clerk of yours would tell any inquiring outsider in case of a loss of life on one of these ships. He'd lie and lie and lie and lie and think he was serving a good cause at that, and the papers publishing the lie would think they were serving a good cause, too--especially the constructive organization papers, as they call themselves. Our big steamship officers these days--outside of the navy--don't get the kind of work that keeps men up to the mark, and not getting it they grow soft--their bodies and their souls become flabby. Engineer officers nowadays have the work cut out for them and they are doing good work, but the bridge officers are no longer men of the sea--they're clerks, agents in floating hotels. And the crew take their tone from the officers. When the commander's weak, your whole outfit is apt to weaken, especially under a strain."

They resumed their pacing, Kieran with head high in the air, inhaling deep breaths of the fresh salt air.

The passenger came out of a deep meditation. "Kieran, you can do a good work for us. Is there any berth with this line you'd like to have? If there is, say so. You can have it. You can have that head clerk's job if you want it. And I think that after a while I could get you mine, for I'm only there to fill a gap."

Kieran shook his head. "It wouldn't do."

"Why not? You're the man for the job."

"No, I'm not the man. You haven't got me quite right. I can point out errors, but I'm not the man to correct them. I'm not a good executive."

"You certainly were the good executive in the bosun's case."

"N-no, no. You mustn't count him. If he was a John L. Sullivan, say, in his good days, it would prove something. Besides, I don't care for fighting--for beating people up. I do hate though to see a bully or a faker getting the best of it, and maybe having had time to knock around and study people, I can pick out a bully or a faker quicker than most people, and seeing somebody getting too much the best of it, why, sometimes I can't help butting in."

"And because of that faculty of seeing things, once you made up your mind to settle down to it, you'd make good on this job I'm offering you."

"No, you've got me wrong again. I'm not a reformer, and never will be, I hope. Reformers, or most that ever I met, are only men who first tried to play politics and got licked at it. I'm only an observer."

"But you like a fight?"

"M-m-m-n not me. And I never did. Any man, of course, likes the excitement once he's into it, but what man enjoys smashing another man in the face? What fights I've been into I couldn't side-step--not without crawling, I mean. No, no, I wouldn't make good on your job. I'd go along all right in your office back in New York for awhile,--for a month, two months, six months,--who knows, maybe a year, and then one day I'd look out the window, take a look down on the Battery, say at the elevated railroad or the Aquarium Building, and the Coney Island steamer dock with the barkers yelling and gesturing, and the loafers on the benches in between, and from that I'd look down the bay and see the Statue of Liberty--some morning that would be, maybe, when the sun was lighting up New York Bay as it does some mornings, or maybe it would be on a late afternoon, with the sun setting over on the Jersey shore, the dark smoke from a hundred chimneys smooching across the pink and purple of it, and, if 'twas summer, a haze like a bridal veil over it all, and between that and the Battery the life of a hundred craft--ferry-boats, tow-boats, lighters, windjammers, steam-yachts, ocean-liners, harbor, coastwise and foreign bound, a hundred different kinds coming and going, the Lord knows where, but to where no four walls will bound 'em for a time, be sure of that. And if ever I did look and looked long enough, be sure the earth would look like it was rolling by too slow and I'd want to get out and give it a push to speed it up. No, no. That"--he looked up at the serene blue--"for my ceiling. And that"--he pointed to the dimpling green sea--"for my office floor. And that"--he waved a hand to space--"for a window. And let all the bruising bosuns and bucko ship's officers afloat jump on me, but give me that and I'll take a chance. And--"

He stopped short and sighed. "I do get going sometimes, don't I?" He looked around the deck. In a bucket of water by the rail the bosun was bathing his battered features. "The bosun reminds me. To-day I promised him I'd finish my Flying Walrus song."

"Go ahead and finish it--that first verse was pretty good."

"The second's better--or I think so. And"--he grinned at the passenger--"I composed it myself, too, to an air running in my head. And I suppose I ought to finish it. And yet"--the bosun was pouring, very quietly, his bucket of wash water into the scuppers--"that would be sort of rubbing it in, wouldn't it?"

"What of it? It will do them all good."

"I don't know about that. If it"--and just then three bells struck, and three bells on the Rapidan meant supper for the watch below.

Kieran left to go to supper, and the passenger noted the deference of the crew toward him. Not one who found himself in his way but hopped swiftly aside to give him gangway.

"How conducive to high judgment, how accelerating to respect is success," mused the passenger. "Two hours ago hardly one of them who did not set him down for a half-crazy, or, at least, an over-sanguine visionary--but now--they bound like stags before him, and none more propitiatingly agile than the former satellites of our deposed bosun. A Don Quixote"--murmured the passenger--"maybe, but a 20th century Don Quixote--with a wallop in each hand. If the Don Quixotes generally had his equipment, it would not be windmills alone which would suffer, and some joy then for honest men to watch the tilting."

[The end]
James B. Connolly's short story: Don Quixote Kieran, Pump-Man

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