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Updated: May 26, 2025
He seized him by his epaulettes and pushed him backward. With the strength of a bull he butted and shoved him across the deck. "Off my ship you!" he roared. "Every one of you; you're a gang of murdering cutthroats." The deck-hands and the ship-stewards, who had gathered at the gangway to assist in throwing me down it, sprang to the Captain's aid. "Over with him, boys," he roared.
Volunteers were called for from the army, men who had had experience in any capacity in navigating the western rivers. Captains, pilots, mates, engineers and deck-hands enough presented themselves to take five times the number of vessels we were moving through this dangerous ordeal.
One of these, the Red Moon, faced the row of waterfront houses, standing at the intersection of a street which struck inland to the pulsing heart of Limehouse. A retired bully of the prize-ring ruled with a high hand over its several bars and many patrons, yellow men and white girls, deck-hands and dock-workers, pugilistic and criminal celebrities of the quarter, and their sycophants.
And on the few surviving steamboats those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career which is exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of Shakespeare numbers there are still findable two or three river-pilots who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still night the "Six feet SCANT!" that made me shudder, and the "M-a-r-k TWAIN!" that took the shudder away, and presently the darling "By the d-e-e-p FOUR!" that lifted me to heaven for joy.
A tramp's a tramp, no matter how much purple he's been used to, and you can say the same for a stowaway. What's the matter with me taking the place of one of those deck-hands, or whatever you call 'em, you lost last night?" "What's that?" "Swabbers, maybe you call 'em. Men that mop up the decks after everybody else has turned in."
"If this is a ship, I must have come aboard. How did I do it? When? Where?" "You came on with two men, or rather between two men, about eight- thirty this morning. They put you in here, gave your ticket to the purser, and went ashore. The slim fellow was crying, and one of the deck-hands had to help him down the gangway." "That was Higgins all right.
"Three chaars for the wee one!" called out an Irishman, boiling over with enthusiasm, "and if there's a spalpeen on boord that don't jine in, I'll crack the head of the same, or me name isn't Patsey McConough!" But the deck-hands had not been idle spectators during the few minutes since the accident.
The banks now were low, the swamps, at times, showing their fan-topped cypresses close to where we passed; and all the live oaks carried their funereal Spanish moss, gray and ghostlike. We sometimes passed river craft, going up or down, nondescript, dingy and slow, for the most part. Sometimes we were hailed gaily by monkey-like deck-hands, sometimes saluted by the pilot of a larger boat.
Johns River and other streams during the month, there would be a great deal of boat-work for the deck-hands and firemen, for the latter did not complain if called to other duty than that of the fire-room, and by this time were good sailors. I went to my breakfast, which had been waiting an hour for me on the galley, for I never left the deck till the anchor was overboard.
The transport was a small side-wheel boat belonging to the quarter-master's department. The deck-hands were all soldiers perhaps half a dozen of them in all the only steamboatmen on board being one pilot, four engineers, and as many firemen. The steamer was armed with two howitzers, mounted on the boiler-deck, and the muskets of the soldiers were stacked in the cabin.
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