"Not bigger, if they could fight at all?"

"Maybe they couldn't, but"--from beneath the grease and soot of his face
his teeth and eyes flashed swiftly upward--"they said they could."

Noyes took another turn of the long gangway. The tarpaulin was now
clamped tightly to the hatch-combings, rendering it smooth and firm
under foot. Camp-stools for the principals were also there, and two
buckets of freshly drawn water in opposite corners.

"Mr. Kieran"--Noyes had halted again beside the pump-man--"what is it
the captain's got against you?"

"Why"--he hesitated--"I don't think he's got anything against me
exactly." His next words came slowly, thoughtfully. "He may have
something against my kind, though."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, you see, a man of the captain's kind can never get a man of my
kind to play his game--and he knows it. What he wants around here is a
lot of poor slobs who will take the kicks and curses and poor grub, say
thank you, sir, and come again."

"But what game does he want you to play?"

"Well, I'm the pump-man. The ship has big bills for valving and piping
and repairing. If ever the office got suspicious and called me in on
it, why--" he shrugged his shoulders.

Noyes studied the sea for a while. By and by he faced inboard. "Kieran,
I've seen ships before, even if I do get sea-sick sometimes. Was that an
accident to-day, that block dropping on you--almost?"

"Accident?" The recurring smile flashed anew. "That's the third I've
side-stepped in two days. I was in the bottom of a tank yesterday when a
little hammer weighing about ten pounds happened to fall in. In the old
clipper-ship days, Mr. Noyes, a great trick was to send a man out on the
end of a yard in heavy weather and get the man at the wheel to snap him
overboard. On steamers, of course, we have no yards, and so little items
like spanners and wrenches and three-sheaved blocks fall from aloft. But
that's all right." The pump-man, all the while he was talking, kept
fitting his dies and cutting his threads. "I've got no kick coming. I
came aboard this ship with my eyes open, and I'm keeping 'em open"--he
laughed softly--"so I won't be carried ashore with 'em closed."

Noyes took a close look at the pump-man. The trick of light speech, his
casual manner in speaking of serious things, was not unbecoming, but
this was a more purposeful sort of person than he had reckoned; a more
set man physically, a more serious man morally,