FullReads

“Now, boys,” said the shipping-master, cheerily, as he unfolded the articles on the capstan-head, “answer, and step over to starboard as I read your names. Ready? Tosser Galvin.”

“Here.” A man carried his bag across the deck a short distance.

“Bigpig Monahan.” Another–as large a man as the mate–answered and followed.

“Moccasey Gill.”

“Good God!” muttered the mate, as this man responded.

“Sinful Peck.” An undersized man, with a cultivated blond mustache, lifted his hat politely to Mr. Jackson, disclosing a smooth, bald head, and passed over, smiling sweetly. Whatever his character, his name belied his appearance; for his face was cherubic in its innocence.

“Say,” interrupted the mate, angrily, “what kind of a game is this, anyhow? Are these men sailors?”

“Yes, yes,” answered the shipping-master, hurriedly; “you’ll find ’em all right. And, Sinful,” he added, as he frowned reprovingly at the last man named, “don’t you get gay till my receipt’s signed and I’m clear of you.”

Mr. Jackson wondered, but subsided; and, each name bringing forth a response, the reader called off: “Seldom Helward, Shiner O’Toole, Senator Sands, Jump Black, Yampaw Gallagher, Sorry Welch, Yorker Jimson, General Lannigan, Turkey Twain, Gunner Meagher, Ghost O’Brien, and Poop-deck Cahill.”

Then the astounded Mr. Jackson broke forth profanely. “I’ve been shipmates,” he declared between oaths, “with freak names of all nations; but this gang beats me. Say, you,” he called,–“you with the cro’-jack eye there,–what’s that name you go by? Who are you?” He spoke to the large man who had answered to “Bigpig Monahan,” and who suffered from a slight distortion of one eye; but the man, instead of civilly repeating his name, answered curtly and coolly:

“I’m the man that struck Billy Patterson.”

Fully realizing that the mate who hesitates is lost, and earnestly resolved to rebuke this man as his insolence required, Mr. Jackson had secured a belaying-pin and almost reached him, when he found himself looking into the bore of a pistol held by the shipping-master.

“Now, stop this,” said the latter, firmly; “stop it right here, Mr. Jackson. These men are under my care till you’ve signed my receipt. After that you can do as you like; but if you touch one of them before you sign, I’ll have you up ‘fore the commissioner. And you fellers,” he said over his shoulder, “you keep still and be civil till I’m rid of you. I’ve used you well, got your berths, and charged you nothin’. All I wanted was to get Cappen Benson the right kind of a crew.”

“Let’s see that receipt,” snarled the mate. “Put that gun up, too, or I’ll show you one of my own. I’ll tend to your good men when you get ashore.” He glared at the quiescent Bigpig, and followed the shipping-master–who still held his pistol ready, however–over to the rail, where the receipt was produced and signed.

“Away you go, now,” said the mate; “you and your gun. Get over the side.”

The shipping-master did not answer until he had scrambled down to the waiting tug and around to the far side of her deck-house. There, ready to dodge, he looked up at the mate with a triumphant grin on his shrewd face, and called:

“Say, Mr. Jackson, ‘member the old bark Fair Wind ten years ago, and the ordinary seaman you triced up and skinned alive with a deck-scraper? D’ you ‘member, curse you? ‘Member breakin’ the same boy’s arm with a heaver? You do, don’t you? I’m him. ‘Member me sayin’ I’d get square?”

He stepped back to avoid the whirling belaying-pin sent by the mate, which, rebounding, only smashed a window in the pilot-house. Then, amid an exchange of blasphemous disapproval between Mr. Jackson and the tug captain, and derisive jeers from the shipping-master,–who also averred that Mr. Jackson ought to be shot, but was not worth hanging for,–the tug gathered in her lines and steamed away.

Wrathful of soul, Mr. Jackson turned to the men on the deck. They had changed their position; they were now close to the fife-rail at the mainmast, surrounding Bigpig Monahan (for by their names we must know them), who, with an injured expression of face, was shedding outer garments and voicing his opinion of Mr. Jackson, which the others answered by nods and encouraging words. He had dropped a pair of starched cuffs over a belaying-pin, and was rolling up his shirt-sleeve, showing an arm as large as a small man’s leg, and the mate was just about to interrupt the discourse, when the second mate called his name. Turning, he beheld him beckoning violently from the cabin companionway, and joined him.