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The more important matters, such as the men's clothes-bags, the rolls of bedding, and the heavier supplies of provisions, had not yet cut loose from their moorings, although the rapid backing of the water threatened soon to convert the wanigan into a chute for nearly the full volume of the current.
The men of the watch on and the watch off, dinner being over, were sitting or lounging about in all sorts of easy attitudes, some of them busy with their needles; others overhauling their clothes-bags, to which they had been given access that afternoon; others grouped about some more brilliant story-teller than the rest, eagerly drinking in the multifarious details of some exciting personal experience, or romantic adventure, or never-ending story of shipwreck or battle, or mystery technically, yarns!
Or at least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled out the master's canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to mount guard over them. "'Bout time you come," growled the god of the car, an hour later, when Weedon Scott appeared at the door. "That dog of yourn won't let me lay a finger on your stuff." White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished.
The watch, therefore, is called at a quarter-past eight, or it may be one bell, which is half-past. The forenoon watch bring their clothes-bags up with them, in order that they may not be again required to leave the deck before muster.
The morning was clear, colourless, grey overhead; the dock like a sheet of darkling glass crowded with upside-down reflections of warehouses, of hulls and masts of silent ships. Rare figures moved here and there on the distant quays. A knot of men stood alongside with clothes-bags and wooden chests at their feet.
"Half as many is too much; get rid of them. Throw away that tent, and all those dishes, who's going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you think you're travelling on a Pullman?" And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous. Mercedes cried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and article after article was thrown out.
One day, the messes of the starboard-watch were seated here at dinner; forming little groups, twelve or fifteen men in each, reclining about the beef-kids and their pots and pans; when all of a sudden the ship was seized with such a paroxysm of rolling that, in a single instant, everything on the berth-deck pots, kids, sailors, pieces of beef, bread-bags, clothes-bags, and barges were tossed indiscriminately from side to side.
Jackson, the skipper didn't pick 'em just asked me for sixteen good men, and there you are. Muster up to the capstan here, boys," he called, "and be counted." As they grouped themselves amidships with their clothes-bags, the shipping-master beckoned the chief mate over to the rail. "You see, Mr. Jackson," he said, with a backward glance at the men, "I've only played the regular dodge on 'em.
"Chop it up, and shove the pieces under the tarpaulin, Sam; they will get a bit drier there, and we may want them for a fire presently; there is no saying how long we may be in this here floating forest. That's right. Now, hang one of them lanterns up in the cabin. That's not so bad. Now, lad, our clothes-bags are all right on these hooks.
Capturing a bunch of Indians back-tripping from Lake Linderman, he persuaded them to put their straps on the outfit. They charged thirty cents a pound to carry it to the summit of Chilcoot, and it nearly broke him. As it was, some four hundred pounds of clothes-bags and camp outfit was not handled. He remained behind to move it along, dispatching Kit with the Indians.
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