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Updated: June 27, 2025
Possibly FitzGerald himself had, by too open a display of his admiration for his partner, this typical longshoreman, contributed to the personal self-satisfaction which must have been at the bottom of the man's reasons for wishing to be free of one who had befriended him so delicately and so generously. Posh himself admits, or rather boasts, that the "break" was owing to his own action.
The air is heavy with the smell of oil, and to the unaccustomed longshoreman it is almost choking, though the hatches are off. The submarine man breathes this air as if it were the purest ozone. Here in the engine-room aft men must live and strain every nerve even if for days at a time every crack whereby the fresh air could get in is hermetically sealed.
For an answer, the longshoreman swung a big arm over his own head and gave such a mighty pull at the clothesline that it came loose from its fastening at either end. "Cis! He'll kill y'!" cried the boy, suddenly terror-stricken. Girls could be brave! Father Pat had said it, and Edith Cavell had proved it. Cis was proving it, too!
But he had set up his Posh on such a pinnacle of pre-eminence over all his fellow-men that it is possible that his bitterness in discovering that after all his protege was merely a well-built, handsome, ordinary longshoreman caused a greater revulsion than would have occurred had his first estimate of Posh's character been less exalted.
So that as Barber once more bent and dragged at him, the chair and the old man followed about the kitchen. "Let go!" commanded the longshoreman. He tried to shake Johnnie free of the wheel. But Johnnie held on, and his cries redoubled. The kitchen was in a tumult now, for old Grandpa was also weeping not only in fear for Johnnie, but in terror lest he himself be overturned.
At the same moment Cis and Johnnie understood what was impending the same terrible moment; and they cried out together, the one in renewed anger, the other in mortal pain: "NO!" For Barber had turned to the stove. Johnnie rushed to the longshoreman and again clung to him, weeping, pleading, promising, asking to be whipped oh, anything but that his treasures be destroyed.
All this seemed naturally the accompaniment of the embarkment of Van Cleft's yachting cruise, but the sleeping longshoreman suddenly arose to his feet and blew a shrill police whistle. Next instant the flash of his pocket-lamp illumined the dark boat below him. A volley of curses greeted this untoward action! A revolver barked from the hand of a big man in the stern.
"Aw, that'll do!" cried the longshoreman. He came slouching out of his room. He was fully dressed, not having taken off his clothes the night before. For it had been his intention to leave Cis and Johnnie tied for an hour or two, then to get up and set them free.
Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's gone too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay. He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression of before. Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said. And what's the number for? loafer number two queried. Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.
What he saw brought him upright like a pistol shot, his face suddenly scarlet, his mustache whipping up and down, and that eye of his glowering at the longshoreman ferociously. "Cæsar Augustus, Philobustus, Hennery Clay!" he burst out. "Bla-a-ack a-a-and blu-u-ue!" "And, oh, listen what else he did!" Cis went on. "The uniform you gave to Johnnie " "Yas?" "He put it in the stove!" One-Eye stared.
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