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There was a little steamer moored right opposite me that seemed about ready to sail. The funnels of it were throwin' out smoke, and a gang of roustabouts were carryin' aboard a pile of boxes that was stacked up on the wharf. The boxes were about two feet square, and somethin' like four feet long, and they seemed to be pretty heavy. "I walked over, careless, to the stack of boxes.
He advanced to the edge of the quay, and in desperate French, of which his adversaries understood not a word, threatened to have them dragged from their perches and sent to New Caledonia. A well-aimed lime squashed on his cheek, and with a "Sapristi!" he fled behind a stack of boxes. The riot became general, the roustabouts heaving iron bars, pieces of wood, and anything they could find.
Then the Captain rushed in, and the mate followed with a gang of roustabouts, who soon had quiet restored. I was hit pretty hard with a chair, otherwise my injuries were not serious. I did not use my revolver, as none were drawn, for I never wanted to kill any man. My dear old mother she lived to be ninety-three years old God bless her. I can see her now, with her silvered hair and tottering step.
He stood staring at it, while the roustabouts passed and repassed, noisily carrying great logs of wood on shoulders padded by their woollen caps. "That'll be the first street-car used in the city of New Orleans, if it ever gets there, Colonel." The Colonel jumped. Captain Lige was standing beside him. "Lige, is that you? We waited supper for you."
"You would show up well in those things," Violet said to her, "that is, for a thin woman. The men don't care much for thinness." "Not the clodhoppers and roustabouts that come to see us," retorted Mabel. "The more a woman looks like a cow or a sow, the better they like it. They don't believe it's female unless it looks like what they're used to in the barnyard and the cattle pen."
The mate, at the steamer edge to superintend the loading, and the wharf master on the levee beside the freight released each a hoarse torrent of profanity to spur on the yelling, laughing roustabouts, more brute than man.
In mid-stream the paddle of a river steamer was churning the water into foam, and up-stream, near the dock, negro roustabouts could be heard singing. But under the bridge all was silent, and the levee was deserted in both directions. He strained his eyes to distinguish that vague figure on the barge from the surrounding shadows.
We borrowed a small handling-lifter and one of the spaceport roustabouts to tow it for us, loaded Murell's luggage and my things onto it, and started down to the bottomside cargo hatches, from which the ship was discharging. There was no cargo at all to go aboard, except mail and things like Adolf Lautier's old film and music tapes. Our only export is tallow-wax, and it all goes to Terra.
Doris Rives clung tighter to Melroy's arm as he pushed a way for himself and her through the crowd and into the temporary office. Inside, they were met by a young man with a deputy marshal's badge on his flannel shirt and a .38 revolver on his hip. "Ben Puryear: Dr. Rives," Melroy introduced. "Who's the mouthy character outside?" "One of the roustabouts; name's Burris," Puryear replied.
This does not mean that Washington cursed his negroes as the mate of a Mississippi River boat does his roustabouts, but I suspect that those who have heard such a mate can form an idea of the tone employed by our Farmer that so shocked Parkinson. Military officers still employ it toward their men. Corporal punishment was resorted to on occasion, but not to extremes.
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