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To hear him growling away, gradually lower and lower down, till he can’t get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world, and it is quite impossible to witness unmoved the impressive solemnity with which he pours forth his soul in ‘My ’art’s in the ’ighlands,’ or ‘The brave old Hoak.’ The stout man is also addicted to sentimentality, and warbles ‘Fly, fly from the world, my Bessy, with me,’ or some such song, with lady-like sweetness, and in the most seductive tones imaginable.
But Hoak had no care for self-preservation. His sole mission was reprisal. The fight about the ladder's foot had waned. With a leap that carried him half-way up and an agility that knew no thwarting the madman made the upper level.
We learned later that the captain was one of those persons whom music frenzies, and from that time on we did not even permit ourselves the consolation of whistling a favorite air. Of all the restless men in the fo'castle, Coulter most keenly watched one John Hoak, a gigantic seaman from Liverpool, in whom he instinctively recognized a potential ringleader of mutiny.
The boats were not yet launched, but now the men were embarking. Coulter himself was the last to leap for the swinging boat, and a moment before he did so Hoak appeared. He had miraculously made his way alive out of the engine-room's inferno, and his coming was that of a maniac. His huge body, bare to the waist, sweat-streaked and soot-blackened and fire-blistered, was also dark with blood.
The tyrannical despot of the vessel, standing poised for his swing to the boat raised the pistol which had already halted other mad rushes during the last sanguinary minutes. At its bark Hoak staggered to his knees, but was up again and charging forward with the impetus of a wounded rhinoceros. He had one deed to do before he died and would not be denied.
They just hoak out with a stick or a bit of board what they require for that day's food, picking the large ones and leaving the small ones in the ground. Oats or something else will be seen half-choked with weeds and the growth from the potatoes so left. The slovenliness of these people is most exasperating. Of course they are all Home Rulers in effect, though not in theory.
Time and again you've bought some poor kid from a hard master like old Hoak, to save him from suffering. Now you'll get to be hard and hateful like old Hoak yourself." "Judy, remember my mother." "Do you think your mother, if she is alive, would like to think of your standing over that old wretch while he was whipped and whipped and washed with salt water, maybe?
When the captain broke silence his voice was cool, almost casual. "Mr. Kirkenhead," he ordered the chief engineer, "take this man Hoak to the stokehold, and keep him there until we reach port. Give him double shift and if he makes a false move kill him." The giant made a passionate start forward, and found himself looking down the barrel of Coulter's magazine pistol.
One evening Hoak vindicated this appraisement by defiantly and loudly playing a music-hall tune on an accordion. A strain of it reached the bridge and Coulter, who was on watch, ordered the offender forward. After a violent and profane denunciation, under which the giant writhed in silent fury, Coulter lashed out to the sailor's mouth with his clenched fist and sent him sprawling to the deck.
'Oh, no they won't, Rushton's too artful for that. It seems the agent is a pal of 'is, and they worked it between 'em. 'Wot a bloody cheek, though! exclaimed Harlow. 'Oh, that's nothing to some of the things I've known 'em do before now, said the man on the pail. 'Why, don't you remember, back in the summer, that carved hoak hall table as Rushton pinched out of that 'ouse on Grand Parade?
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