nd Swedish face
appeared at the door.

"Hi, you in dere--you big feller--you come out. You belong in der utter
watch. You hear? You come out on deck," he called.

"Aye, aye, sir," said Johnson, rising sullenly.

"All the better, Johnson," whispered Breen. "One can keep a lookout all
the time. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut."

So for these two men the work of the voyage began. The hard-headed,
aggressive Johnson, placed in the mate's watch, had no trouble in
finding his place, and keeping it, at the top of the class. He ruled
the assorted types of all nations, who worked and slept with him, with
sound logic backed by a strong arm and hard fist, never trying to
conceal his contempt for them.

"You mixed nest o' mongrels," he would say, at the end of some petty
squabble which he had settled for them, "why don't you stay in your own
country ships? Or, if you must sign in American craft, try to feel and
act like Americans. It's just this same yawping at one another in the
forecastles that makes it easy for the buckoes aft to hunt you. And
that's why you get your berths. No skipper 'll ship an American sailor
while there's a Dutchman left in the shippin'-office. He wouldn't think
it safe to go to sea with too many American sailors forward to call him
down and make him treat 'em decent. He picks a Dago here, and a
Dutchman there, and all the Sou'wegians he sees, and fills in with the
rakin's and scrapin's o' Hell, Bedlam, and Newgate, knowin' they'll
hate one another worse than they hate him, and never stand together."

To which they would respond in kind, though of lesser degree, always
yielding him the last word when he spoke it loud enough.

But Breen, in the second mate's watch, had trouble with his fellows at
first. They could not understand his quiet, gentlemanly demeanor,
mistaking it for fear of them; so, unknown to Johnson, for he would not
complain, they subjected him to all the petty annoyances which
ignorance may inflict upon intelligence. Though he showed a theoretical
knowledge of ships and the sea superior to any they had met with, he
was not their equal in the practical work of a sailor. He was awkward
at pulling ropes with others, placing his hands in the wrong place and
mixing them up in what must be a concerted pull to be effective. His
hands, unused to labor, became blistered and sore, and he often,
unconsciously perhaps, held back from a task, to save himself from
pain. He was an indiffere