Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 9

McGarver, the straw-boss, would always lie awake to enjoy a good brisk indecent story, but he liked Wrennie's admiration of him, so, lunging with his bull-like head out of his berth, he snorted:

"Hey, you, Pete, it's time to pound your ear. Cut it out."

Wrennie called down, sternly, "I ain't no theological student, Pete, and I don't mind profanity, but I wish you wouldn't talk like a garbage-scow."

"Hey, Poicy, did yuh bring your dictionary?" Pete bellowed to Tim, two feet distant from him. To Wrennie, "Say, Gladys, ain't you afraid one of them long woids like, t'eological, will turn around and bite you right on the wrist?"

"Dry up!" irritatedly snapped a Canadian.

"Aw, cut it out, you--," groaned another.

"Shut up," added McGarver, the straw-boss. "Both of you."

Raging: "Gwan to bed, Pete, or I'll beat your block clean off.

I mean it, see? _Hear me?_"

Yes, Pete heard him. Doubtless the first officer on the bridge heard, too, and perhaps the inhabitants of Newfoundland. But Pete took his time in scratching the back of his neck and stretching before he crawled into his berth. For half an hour he talked softly to Tim, for Wrennie's benefit, stating his belief that Satan, the head boss, had once thrown overboard a Jew much like Wrennie, and was likely thus to serve Wrennie, too.

Tim pictured the result when, after the capsizing of the steamer which would undoubtedly occur if this long sickening motion kept up, Wrennie had to take to a boat with Satan.

The fingers of Wrennie curled into shape for strangling some one.

When Pete was asleep he worried off into thin slumber.

Then, there was Satan, the head boss, jerking him out of his berth, stirring his cramped joints to another dawn of drudgery--two hours of work and two of waiting before the daily eight-o'clock insult called breakfast. He tugged on his shoes, marveling at Mr. Wrenn's really being there, at his sitting in cramped stoop on the side of a berth in a dark filthy place that went up and down like a freight elevator, subject to the orders of persons whom he did not in the least like.

Through the damp gray sea-air he staggered hungrily along the gangway to the hatch amids.h.i.+ps, and trembled down the iron ladder to McGarver's crew 'tween-decks.

First, watering the steers. Sickened by walking backward with pails of water he carried till he could see and think of nothing in the world save the water-b.u.t.t, the puddle in front of it, and the cattlemen mercilessly dipping out pails there, through centuries that would never end. How those steers did drink!

McGarver's favorite bull, which he called "the Grenadier," took ten pails and still persisted in leering with dripping gray mouth beyond the headboard, trying to reach more. As Wrennie was carrying a pail to the heifers beyond, the Grenadier's horn caught and tore his overalls. The boat lurched. The pail whirled out of his hand. He grasped an iron stanchion and kicked the Grenadier in the jaw till the steer backed off, a reformed character.

McGarver cheered, for such kicks were a rule of the game.

"Good work," ironically remarked Tim, the weakling hatter.

"You go to h.e.l.l," snapped Wrennie, and Tim looked much more respectful.

But Wrennie lost this credit before they had finished feeding out the hay, for he grew too dizzy to resent Tim's remarks.

Straining to pitch forkfuls into the pens while the boat rolled, slopping along the wet gangway, down by the bunkers of coal, where the heat seemed a close-wound choking shroud and the darkness was made only a little pale by light coming through dust-caked port-holes, he sneezed and coughed and grunted till he was exhausted. The floating bits of hay-dust were a thousand impish hands with poisoned nails scratching at the roof of his mouth. His skin p.r.i.c.kled all over. He constantly discovered new and aching muscles. But he wabbled on until he finished the work, fifteen minutes after Tim had given out.

He crawled up to the main deck and huddled in the shelter of a pile of hay-bales where Pete was declaring to Tim and the rest that Satan "couldn't never get nothing on him."

Morton broke into Pete's publicity with the question, "Say, is it straight what they say, Pete, that you're the guy that owns the Leyland Line and that's why you know so much more than the rest of us poor lollops? Watson, the needle, quick!" [Applause and laughter.]

Wrennie felt personally grateful to Morton for this, but he went up to the aft top deck, where he could lie alone on a pile of tarpaulins. He made himself observe the sea which, as Kipling and Jack London had specifically promised him in their stories, surrounded him, everywhere s.h.i.+ning free; but he glanced at it only once. To the north was a liner bound for home.

Home! Gee! That _was_ rubbing it in! While at work, whether he was sick or not, he could forget--things. But the liner, fleeting on with bright ease, made the cattle-boat seem about as romantic as Mrs. Zapp's kitchen sink.

Why, he wondered--"why had he been a chump? Him a wanderer?

No; he was a hired man on a sea-going dairy-farm. Well, he'd get onto this confounded job before he was through with it, but then--gee! back to G.o.d's Country!"

While the _Merian_, eleven days out, pleasantly rocked through the Irish Sea, with the moon revealing the coast of Anglesey, one Bill Wrenn lay on the after-deck, condescending to the heavens. It was so warm that they did not need to sleep below, and half a dozen of the cattlemen had brought their mattresses up on deck. Beside Bill Wrenn lay the man who had given him that name--Tim, the hatter, who had become weakly alarmed and admiring as Wrennie learned to rise feeling like a boy in early vacation-time, and to find shouting exhilaration in sending a forkful of hay fifteen good feet.

Morton, who lay near by, had also adopted the name "Bill Wrenn." Most of the trip Morton had discussed Pete and Tim instead of the fact that "things is curious." Mr. Wrenn had been jealous at first, but when he learned from Morton the theory that even a Pete was a "victim of 'vironment" he went out for knowing him quite systematically.

To McGarver he had been "Bill Wrenn" since the fifth day, when he had kept a hay-bale from slipping back into the hold on the boss's head. Satan and Pete still called him "Wrennie," but he was not thinking about them just now with Tim listening admiringly to his observations on socialism.

Tim fell asleep. Bill Wrenn lay quiet and let memory color the sky above him. He recalled the gardens of water which had flowered in foam for him, strange s.h.i.+ps and nomadic gulls, and the schools of sleekly black porpoises that, for him, had whisked through violet waves. Most of all, he brought back the yesterday's long excitement and delight of seeing the Irish coast hills--his first foreign land--whose faint sky fresco had seemed magical with the elfin lore of Ireland, a country that had ever been to him the haunt not of potatoes and politicians, but of fays. He had wanted fays. They were not common on the asphalt of West Sixteenth Street. But now he had seen them beckoning in Wanderland.

He was falling asleep under the dancing dome of the sky, a happy Mr. Wrenn, when he was aroused as a furious Bill, the cattleman.

Pete was clogging near by, singing hoa.r.s.ely, "Dey was a skoit and 'er name was Goity."

"You shut up!" commanded Bill Wrenn.

"Say, be careful!" the awakened Tim implored of him.

Pete snorted: "Who says to 'shut up,' hey? Who was it, Satan?"

From the capstan, where he was still smoking, the head foreman muttered: "What's the odds? The little man won't say it again."

Pete stood by Bill Wrenn's mattress. "Who said 'shut up'?"

sounded ominously.

Bill popped out of bed with what he regarded as a vicious fighting-crouch. For he was too sleepy to be afraid. "I did!

What you going to do about it?" More mildly, as a fear of his own courage began to form, "I want to sleep."

"Oh! You want to sleep. Little mollycoddle wants to sleep, does he? Come here!"

The tough grabbed at Bill's s.h.i.+rt-collar across the mattress.

Bill ducked, stuck out his arm wildly, and struck Pete, half by accident. Roaring, Pete bunted him, and he went down, with Pete kneeling on his stomach and pounding him.

Morton and honest McGarver, the straw-boss, sprang to drag off Pete, while Satan, the panther, with the first interest they had ever seen in his eyes, snarled: "Let 'em fight fair. Rounds.

You're a' right, Bill."

"Right," commended Morton.

Armored with Satan's praise, firm but fearful in his rubber sneakers, surprised and shocked to find himself here doing this, Bill Wrenn squared at the rowdy. The moon touched sadly the lightly sketched Anglesey coast and the rippling wake, but Bill Wrenn, oblivious of dream moon and headland, faced his fellow-bruiser.

They circled. Pete stuck out his foot gently. Morton sprang in, bawling furiously, "None o' them rough-and-tumble tricks."

"Right-o," added McGarver.

Pete scowled. He was left powerless. He puffed and grew dizzy as Bill Wrenn danced delicately about him, for he could do nothing without back-street tactics. He did b.l.o.o.d.y the nose of Bill and pummel his ribs, but many cigarettes and much whisky told, and he was ready to laugh foolishly and make peace when, at the end of the sixth round, he felt Bill's neat little fist in a straight--and entirely accidental--rip to the point of his jaw.

Pete sent his opponent spinning with a back-hander which awoke all the cruelty of the terrible Bill. Silently Bill Wrenn plunged in with a smas.h.!.+ smas.h.!.+ smas.h.!.+ like a murderous savage, using every grain of his strength.

Let us turn from the lamentable luck of Pete. He had now got the idea that his supposed victim could really fight. Dismayed, shocked, disgusted, he stumbled and sought to flee, and was sent flat.