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Updated: June 3, 2025
General Kelly sat a magnificent black charger, and with waving banners, to the martial music of fife and drum corps, company by company, in two divisions, his two thousand stiffs countermarched before him and hit the wagon-road to the little burg of Weston, seven miles away.
"Seein' as how he tried to give us the double cross " "We'll fix Scraggsy all shipshape an' legal so's he won't have no comeback. Quick, grab some o' them empty potato crates an' pile 'em here where the stiffs was lyin' an' cover 'em up with the tarpaulin. I don't want Scraggsy to think the corpses is gone until I've hooked him good and plenty."
That's the only place any lumber-jack could have known me. Here. Come up here. Stand out. Show yourself. And I'll hand the boys your pedigree. It'll be easy. It's the trouble with us just now, we've got too many stiffs from the Skandinavia, and you've got our own good boys paralysed.
But I had not suspected him of treachery to his foc'sle mates, because he was an old sailor and a good one, and there were plenty of stiffs on board more fitted, I thought, for spy's work. But Cockney was the man. I could not mistake his voice for another's. He was even now down below bearing false witness against my friend. I watched the deck closely, and pretty soon I saw Cockney go forward.
There were other factors at work, of course, greed for gold and lust of revenge, but this simple, primal fear for their own skins was the determining factor in the situation. "By God, I never go on deck but I'm scared o' my life!" swore one of the stiffs, named Green. And he voiced the common feeling. I was, of course, much concerned for the parson.
The stiffs were useless aloft on such a night, and the fore and main were given the handful of squareheads and the two tradesmen. When we jumped for the sheer pole we passed within a foot of a figure lounging across the rail at the poop break, and we knew it was Swope. There had been no word from him since the initial order. It was so dark we did not see his face.
And each man said to himself, "I may be the next to get what the little squarehead got." Misery loves company, so these stiffs naturally drew close together. Their common hatred and fear of the afterguard fused them into a unit. By the time we were a month at sea, the stiffs, like the squareheads, were in a most dangerous temper, and ripe for any deviltry.
Consternation was in their faces and voices, especially in the faces and voices of the stiffs. I knew very well what frightened them. Cockney had been most violent and outspoken among those advocating mutiny, far more outspoken than the cautious Blackie or Boston, and the disaffected had naturally confided in him.
They would have done almost anything for him; aye, they loved the little man, and admired him. Yet the stiffs were not much impressed by what Holy Joe did to the mate. I guess they simply couldn't understand it. But Cockney's trying to stick a knife into the mate's back quite captured their fancy. Aye, that attempted murder was a great deed; it made Cockney their hero.
I suppose you have read of the Caruso affair how he kissed a woman in Central Park, or wanted to, and the howl it made? The way they all jumped on him, in the name of morality! And you remember what happened to Gorky, when he was here? Why, these American stiffs, what do they mean by morality? Since they are much too cold-blooded for immortality, what do they know about it?
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