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Updated: May 10, 2025
"Quick with that long boat, Lafitte," I ordered; and he drew our old craft alongside as we slowed down. "Get over yonder and sound for a bar. Take the boat hook. If you get four feet, we'll try it." My hardy young ruffian was nothing if not prompt, nor was he less efficient than the average deck-hand.
He had witnessed it as a deck-hand and as a saloon passenger; as a steerage passenger, and in the humble capacity of a stowaway. Now he was regarding it as a gentleman of leisure, who smoked a cigar that had been paid for, and round whose waist was a belt with gold in it.
Walter was a strong young fellow and had had some practice in boxing, but it was not impossible that, even with the backing of justifiable indignation, the conventional blow straight from the shoulder might have failed to fell the tall deck-hand. But even had Lodloe succeeded in stretching the insulting man upon the dirty deck, it is not at all probable that he would have staid there.
He didn't mind, he said, the trouble of punching their blanked heads down there, blank his soul, but did the condemned sailors think you could keep steam up in the God-forsaken boilers simply by knocking the blanked stokers about? No, by George! You had to get some draught, too may he be everlastingly blanked for a swab-headed deck-hand if you didn't!
That will pen Williams, the engineer, below, where he can make no resistance. As soon as that is done, run to those doors forward which lead down to the dining-room companionway and shut those doors and latch them. That will take care of John, the cook. The deck-hand is away with the varlet. That leaves only the shipmaster and the women captives.
Martial was brusque in mariner, and, though that is not usually resented in British Columbia, he now and then went even further than is considered permissible in that country, and he had gained the sincere dislike of the red-haired George, who acted as the Tillicum's deck-hand, cook, and skipper.
This is, however, rather a matter of private concern than of zealousness in the performance of his official duties; the possibilities of peculation are ever before him. While satisfying the claim of the ticket-collector a deck-hand comes forward and, pointing to the bicycle, blandly asks me for backsheesh.
Malo deck-hand scarin' a couple o' pore boys stiff fer the sake of a thirty-cent knife, why, then, the cook can take hold fer all o' me. I mistrust furriners, livin' or dead." Next morning all, except the cook, were rather ashamed of the ceremonies, and went to work double tides, speaking gruffly to one another.
With his rag of a hat on the ground and his head tightly wrapped in the familiar Madras kerchief of the slave deck-hand, the attendant at the carriage side reverently awaited the relifting of her lids. The old coachman glanced back on her. "Missy?" he tenderly ventured. But the lids still drooped, though she rose. "Watch out fo' de step," said the nearer man.
The deck-hand proved to be a shackly, rather silly effeminate fellow, suggesting idiocy, but doubtless wiry and good enough for the purpose. While they were busy getting up the anchor of the Maggie Darling, I went down into my cabin, to arrange various odds and ends, and presently came the captain, touching his hat.
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