His mirthful humor abruptly vanished. He leaned towards me, and the lids of his little round eyes slowly lifted. It was like the lifting of curtains. For an instant I looked into the unplumbed abyss of the man's soul, and I felt the full impact of his ruthless, powerful mind.

It was an astonishing revelation of character, that glance. I think the Swede designed it so, for he was about to make me a momentous offer.

"Ay ship you by easy ship, sh.o.r.e-going ship. No vatch, no heavy veather, good times, _ja_. You thump mine roonar, you take his voomans, so--you take his yob. _Ja_? You ship by the Knitting Swede?"

The eyelids drooped, and his gaze was again one of infantile innocence.

His fat smooth jowls quivered, as he waited with an expectant smile for my answer.

I'll admit I was completely bowled over for a moment. A hush had fallen upon the room. I heard a voice behind me exclaim softly and bitterly, "Gaw' blimme, 'e's got it!" I knew the voice belonged to a big c.o.c.kney who was, himself, an avowed candidate for the runner's job.

My mind was filled with confused, tingling thoughts. Oh, I was a man, right enough, to be singled out by the Knitting Swede for his chief lieutenancy. I was a hard case, a proper nut, to have that honor offered me. For it _was_ an honor in sailordom. I thought of the foc'sles to come, and my shipmates pointing me out most respectfully as the fighting bloke who had been offered a chief runner's berth by the Knitting Swede.

For I did not doubt there would be other foc'sles, and soon. Life ash.o.r.e at the Knitting Swede's was not for me. Young fool, I was, with all the conceit of my years and inches. Yet I realized clearly enough I would only be happy with the feel of a deck beneath my feet, and the breath of open water in my nostrils. I was of the sea, and for the sea. And if anything were needed to make my decision more certain, there was the little Jewess. She leaned close, and there was more than a hint of command in her voice. "Boy, say yes! I want you to, Boy!"

"Boy!" To me, a nineteen-year-old man, who had just been offered a fighting man's berth! "I want you to," she commanded. I saw more clearly just what the Swede's offer meant: to spend my days in evil living, my drugged will twisted about the slim, dishonest fingers of the wanton; to spend my nights carrying out whatever black rascality the Swede might command. An ign.o.ble slavery. Not for me!

"I'll only ship in a proper ship, Swede," I said, decisively.

The Swede nodded. My refusal did not disconcert him; I think his insight had prepared him for it. But the tension in the room released with a loud gasp of astonishment. It was unbelievable to those bullies that such an offer could be turned down. A sailorman refusing unlimited opportunities for getting drunk! "Gaw' strike me blind, 'e arn't got the guts for hit!" a voice cried at my elbow, and I found the c.o.c.kney openly sneering into my face.

I saw through his motive immediately. c.o.c.kney wanted the job, and he wasn't going to allow the Swede to overlook his peculiar qualifications a second time. Therefore, he would risk battle with me.

I was nothing loath. I might turn down the job, but I would not turn down a challenge. I stepped back, and my coat was already on the floor by the time the Swede had a chance to form his words. And his words showed him also cognizant of the c.o.c.kney's ruse.

"'Vast there, c.o.c.ky! Ay give you the yob. No need to fight, and get smashed sick. To-night I got vork--to put the crew by the _Golden Bough_!"

The c.o.c.kney's hostility melted into a satisfied smirk. He called upon his Maker with many blasphemies while he a.s.sured the Swede he was the very "proper blushin' bloke" for the berth. The crowd straightway lost all interest in the runnership; they had another sensation to occupy them. At the Swede's words, a low growl ran around the room, a growl which swelled into a chorus of imprecations.

The Swede was going to ship the crew for the _Golden Bough_ that night!

That meant he needed sailors. And every man who was in debt to the Swede, or in any way under his thumb (and I suspect every man Jack of them was under his thumb in some fashion or other), quaked in his boots, and thought, "Will the Swede choose me?" For they knew ships, those men, and they knew the _Golden Bough_. Some of them had sailed in her.

The Swede grinned jocosely at me. "How you like to ship by the _Golden Bough_! There ban easy ship, _Ja_! Plenty grub, easy vork, good mates----"

"Yah-h-h!" One swelling, jeering shout from the whole crowd submerged the Swede's joking reference.

"Plenty to eat!" yelled one. "Aye, plenty o' belaying-pin soup, an'

knuckle-duster hash!"

"Easy work!" sang out another. "In your watch below, which never happens!"

"Proper gents, the mates are," spoke up a third. "They eats a sailorman every mornin' for breakfast!"

Oh, they knew the _Golden Bough_! Who did not?

"How many, Swede?" called out a man.

"Ay ban ship a crowd of stiffs--and some sailor-mans," stated the Swede.

Cursing broke out afresh. Some of them must go! The bulk of the crew was to be crimped, of course, in the Swede knew what kennels of the town. But a few tried sailormen must go to leaven that sodden, sea-ignorant lump. It was like condemning men to penal servitude. No wonder they swore. And swear they did, with mouth-filling, curdling oaths, as though in vain hope their flaming words would quite consume that evilly known vessel.

In the midst of that bedlam I stood thinking strange thoughts. It is hardly credible, but I was considering if I should tell the Swede I would ship in the _Golden Bough_. And I had heard all about the ship, too, for if the Knitting Swede was the hero of half the dog-watch yarns, the _Golden Bough_ was the heroine of the other half. I knew of the ship, the most notorious blood-ship afloat, and the queen of all the speedy clippers. I knew of her captain, the black-hearted, silky-voiced Yankee Swope, who boasted he never had to pay off a crew; I knew of her two mates, Fitzgibbon and Lynch, who each boasted he could polish off a watch single-handed, and lived up to his boast. I knew of the famous, blood-specked pa.s.sages the ship had made; of the cruel, bruising life the foremast hands led in her. And I stood before the Swede's bar and considered shipping. Oh, Youth!

For my thoughts were fathered by the vaulting conceit of my nineteen years. Consider . . . a few days before I had for the first time a.s.sumed a man's estate in sailordom. Already I was a marked man. Had I not stopped at the Knitting Swede's, and ruffled on equality with the hard cases? Had I not whipped the bully of the beach? Had I not been offered a fighting man's billet by the Swede, himself? Was not that glory?

Then how much greater the glory if I spoke up with a devil-may-care lilt in my voice, and shipped in the hottest packet afloat!

Glory!--why, I would be the unquestioned c.o.c.k of any foc'sle I afterward happened into. You know, in those days the ambitious young lads regularly shipped in the hot clippers; it was a postgraduate course in seamanship, and accomplishment of such a voyage gave one a standing with his fellows. I had intended going in one--in the _Enterprise_, or the _Glory of the Seas_, both loading in port. But the _Golden Bough_! No man shipped in her, sober, and unafraid. If I shipped, I should be famous the world around as the fellow who feared neither G.o.d, nor Devil, nor Yankee Swope and his bucko mates!

So I stood there, half wishful, half afraid, deaf to all save my own swirling thoughts. And there happened that which gave me my decision.

It was the man with the scar. He had been lounging against the bar, an uninterested spectator of the bestowing of the runnership. Now, my eyes fell upon him, and I saw to my surprise that he was shaken out of his careless humor. He was standing tensely on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, and his hands were gripping the bar rail so fiercely his fingers seemed white and bloodless. It was apparent some stern emotion wrestled him; the profile I saw was set like chiseled marble. There was something indescribably menacing in his poise. The sight of him jolted my ears open to the noises of the room.

The crowd was still talking about the _Golden Bough_. And the talk had progressed, as talk of the _Golden Bough_ always progressed, from skipper and mates, to the lady. They spoke of the ship's mystery, of the Captain's lady. She was a character to pique a sailorman's interest, the Lady of the _Golden Bough_. Her fame was as wide, and much sweeter, than the vessel's. With all their toughs' frankness, the crowd were discussing the lady's puzzling relations with Swope.

"Uncommon queer, I calls it," said one chap, who had sailed in the ship. "They call 'em man an' wife, but she lives to port, an' he to starboard. Separate cabins, dash me! I had it from the cabin boy.

They even eats separate. . . . He's nasty to her--I've heard the devil snarl at her more than once, when I've had a wheel. . . . Blank me, she's a blessed angel. There was I with a sprained wrist big as my blanked head, an' Lynch a-hazin' me to work--and every morning she trips into the foc'sle with her bright cheer an' her linaments. A blanked, blessed angel, she is!"

"He beats her," supplemented another man. "I got it from a mate what chummed with the bloke as was a Sails on her one voyage. He said, that sailmaker did, as how Swope got drunk, and beat her."

The big c.o.c.kney, who had been visibly possessed by a pompous self-importance since his elevation to the dignity of runner, saw fit to interpose his contrary opinion of the Lady of the _Golden Bough_.

Because the man was vile, his words were vile.

"Blimme, yer needn't worrit abaht Yankee Swope's lydy, as yer call 'er.

She arn't nah bleedin' lydy--she's just a blarsted Judy. Yer got to knock a Judy abaht, arn't yer? Hi 'arve hit straight--'e picked 'er hoff the streets----"

The man with the scar wheeled on his heel, reached out, and grasped the c.o.c.kney by his two wrists. I exclaimed aloud when I saw the man's full face. There was death in it. He spoke to c.o.c.kney in a voice of cold fury. "You lie!" he cried. "Say you lie!"

c.o.c.kney was a big man, and husky. He cursed, and struggled. But he was a child in the grasp of that white-faced giant towering over him.

The hands I had seen gripping the rail a moment before, now gripped c.o.c.kney's wrists in the same terrible clutch. They squeezed, as though to crush the very bones. c.o.c.kney squirmed, and whimpered, then he broke down, and screamed in agony.

"Ow, Gaw' blimme, let hup! Hi never meant northin'! A lie-- Ow, yuss--a lie! She's a proper lydy-- Hi never 'eard the hother-- Gaw'

strike me blind!"

The man with the scar cast the fellow contemptuously away; and c.o.c.kney lost no time in putting the distance of the room between them. The big man turned on the Swede, and his voice was sharp and commanding.

"Swede, does the _Golden Bough_ sail to-morrow?"

"_Ja_, with da flood," the Swede answered.

"Then I ship in her," declared the man. "I ship in the _Golden Bough_, Swede!"

It was the spark needed to fire my own resolution. What another dared, I would dare. I thumped the bar with my fist and sang out valorously, "I ship in her too, Swede!"

The Swede's needles stopped flashing in and out of the gray yarn. He regarded us, one after the other, with his baby stare. Then he said to the big man, "Vat if your frients ship by her?"

"I have no friends," was the curt answer.

The Swede leaned back on his stool, and his big belly quivered with his wheezy laughter. "By Yimminy, Ay tank da _Golden Bough_ haf vun lively voyage!" he exclaimed.