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For Christ's sake! Do you want to freeze solid, you human bunch of stiffs?" We came up the plank at the end of the line, and I showed him a letter which I had procured admitting us to the engine rooms. He turned us over promptly to one of his junior engineers, and we were soon climbing down oily ladders through the intricate parts of the engines, all polished, glistening, carefully cleaned.
Just at supper time, as the freight was pulling out of a small town, a man climbed into the car where I was playing pedro with three other stiffs. The man's shirt was bulging suspiciously. In his hand he carried a battered quart-measure from which arose steam. I smelled "Java." I turned my cards over to one of the stiffs who was looking on, and excused myself.
What township have you been paintin' red, Wolf, hey? Did ye clear out the town? How many stiffs was there in the dead-house when you struck the wallaby again, Wolf? I bet you jest made things hum, old son my oath hey!" He took one slow step forward; and Finn immediately took three backward, in one quick jump. "All right, sonny; who wants to hurt ye? Keep your hair on now, do.
Dark close place 'tween-decks, with the steers bellowin' and all parked tight together, and the stiffs gettin' seasick so seasick we just kind of staggered around; and we'd get hold of a head rope and yank and then let go, and the bosses, d yell, `Pull, or I'll brain you. And then the fo'c'sle men packed in like herrings."
We found thim frozen. . . . A blizzard had shprung up, but we shtrapped th' stiffs on th' sled an' mushed ut oursilves tu save th' dogs. "I am a big man, an' shtrong . . . . but Yorkey was th' betther man av us tu that night havin less weight tu pack. I was all in dhrowsy, an' wanted tu give up th' ghost an' shleep an' shleep. . . . Nigh unto death I was. . . ." The murmuring voice died away.
For several months these two had been traveling the country as "blanket stiffs," securing employment in lumber-camps and mines, gathering the workers secretly in the woods to listen to the new gospel of deliverance.
If Swope were killed, they might not go on with it, and what the sailors decided, the stiffs must agree to. And in any case, Newman would be safe. I did not approach my task in a spirit of revulsion and horror. Indeed, no. Why should I have felt thus? In my experience I had not yet gathered the idea that human life was sacred. Certainly, my experience in the Golden Bough had not taught me that.
"And to think of having it after dark, without chaperons to look after us!" exclaimed Belle. "I doubt if some of the stiff girls will be allowed to come on that account." "Then we'll have a better time without the stiffs," declared the young hostess. "I'm sure our patronesses are protection enough, and mother is going to delay her trip a few days on purpose to be on hand."
I won't say that the rest of us damned Cockney. We were, after all, foc'sle savages, and our hatred of Fitzgibbon was very bitter. But it took the stiffs to honor Cockney for that knife-play. Well, Newman might dismiss this fellow with a contemptuous word, but I couldn't. Cockney had become a rival I must reckon with.
The spectators were mostly Irishmen, and it offended them to see what should have been a spirited fight so grossly bungled. "G'wan away home, ye quitters!" roared one. A second member of the audience alluded to them as "stiffs." It was evident that the besieging army was beginning to grow a little unpopular. More action was needed if they were to retain the esteem of Broster Street.
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