an' blistered son
of perdition,' he says, 'I'll learn you to 'ide liquor in your bunk.
Wine is a knocker,' he says, and stretches me. And with that goes back
to his cabin to _prye_ for me! I 'eard 'im groanin' as I come by the
dead-light. Oh, he's a 'oly wonder and no mistyke--once he goes to set a
bloke right there's nothin' he won't do for 'im!"

Nobody knew what wide courses had brought him eastward; his history
began at the dock head where he appeared with the famous clay pipe in
his mouth and the rest of his luggage in a plaid. There was a loose
rumor he had once been top tinker in the big liners, until he took to
raiding the saloon for revivals and frightening the lady passengers into
fits. It was said again that he had come out from his native boiler
shops of Clyde as a missionary, making vast trouble for the official
brethren and seeking converts with a club. But if his doctrine was
somewhat crude, he had a lifetime's knowledge of machinery, and the man
that can nurse engines will need to show fewer diplomas in outlandish
parts than the one that can save souls. By the same token Chris Wickwire
undertook to do both.

* * * * *

You can figure how this bleak moralist would fasten on a type like
Sutton. Soft airs and sweet skies had no appeal for the Cameronian; to
him the balmy East was all one net of the devil baited with strange
seductions, and unnameable allurements. The rest of us were hardly worth
a serious warning. But our youthful mate, with the milk scarce dry on
his lips, as you might say, and his fresh appetite for life and
confident humor--here was a brand to be snatched from the burning: here
was a stray lamb for an anxious shepherd!

And Sutton--at the first he took to it like a treat. It made a new game
for him, you see, amusing and rather flattering as well, the kind of a
jape he was all too apt at.

"Where ha' ye been the day--ashore again? Buyin' gauds an' silk
pajamies, I notice. Laddie, do ye never tak thocht for your immortal
speerit, which canna hide under lasceevious trickeries nor yet cover its
waeful' nakedness? No' to speak of yon blazin' Oriental bazzaars, fu' o'
damnable pitfalls for the unwary! Aye, laugh now!... Laddie, ye're
light-minded. Heaven send down its truth upon ye before ye wuther like
the lilies o' the field!"

This sort of thing was good fun for Sutton--at the start, as I say. He
must have had many a rare chuckle from superior ground.