The Mucker | Page 9

with the rough but sensible advice of his
messmates. The mate, for his part, gave no indication of harboring the
assault that Billy had made upon him other than to assign the most
dangerous or disagreeable duties of the ship to the mucker whenever it
was possible to do so; but the result of this was to hasten Billy's
nautical education, and keep him in excellent physical trim.
All traces of alcohol had long since vanished from the young man's
system. His face showed the effects of his enforced abstemiousness in a
marked degree. The red, puffy, blotchy complexion had given way to a
clear, tanned skin; bright eyes supplanted the bleary, bloodshot things
that had given the bestial expression to his face in the past. His features,
always regular and strong, had taken on a peculiarly refined dignity
from the salt air, the clean life, and the dangerous occupation of the
deep-sea sailor, that would have put Kelly's gang to a pinch to have
recognized their erstwhile crony had he suddenly appeared in their
midst in the alley back of the feed-store on Grand Avenue.
With the new life Billy found himself taking on a new character. He
surprised himself singing at his work--he whose whole life up to now
bad been devoted to dodging honest labor--whose motto bad been: The
world owes me a living, and it's up to me to collect it. Also, he was
surprised to discover that he liked to work, that he took keen pride in
striving to outdo the men who worked with him, and this spirit, despite
the suspicion which the captain entertained of Billy since the episode of
the forecastle, went far to making his life more endurable on board the
Halfmoon, for workers such as the mucker developed into are not to be
sneezed at, and though he had little idea of subordination it was worth
putting up with something to keep him in condition to work. It was this
line of reasoning that saved Billy's skull on one or two occasions when
his impudence had been sufficient to have provoked the skipper to a
personal assault upon him under ordinary conditions; and Mr. Ward,
having tasted of Billy's medicine once, had no craving for another
encounter with him that would entail personal conflict.

The entire crew was made up of ruffians and unhung murderers, but
Skipper Simms had had little experience with seamen of any other ilk,
so he handled them roughshod, using his horny fist, and the short,
heavy stick that he habitually carried, in lieu of argument; but with the
exception of Billy the men all had served before the mast in the past, so
that ship's discipline was to some extent ingrained in them all.
Enjoying his work, the life was not an unpleasant one for the mucker.
The men of the forecastle were of the kind he had always known--there
was no honor among them, no virtue, no kindliness, no decency. With
them Billy was at home--he scarcely missed the old gang. He made his
friends among them, and his enemies. He picked quarrels, as had been
his way since childhood. His science and his great strength, together
with his endless stock of underhand tricks brought him out of each
encounter with fresh laurels. Presently he found it difficult to pick a
fight--his messmates had had enough of him. They left him severely
alone.
These ofttimes bloody battles engendered no deep-seated hatred in the
hearts of the defeated. They were part of the day's work and play of the
half-brutes that Skipper Simms had gathered together. There was only
one man aboard whom Billy really hated. That was the passenger, and
Billy hated him, not because of anything that the man had said or done
to Billy, for he had never even so much as spoken to the mucker, but
because of the fine clothes and superior air which marked him plainly
to Billy as one of that loathed element of society--a gentleman.
Billy hated everything that was respectable. He had hated the smug,
self-satisfied merchants of Grand Avenue. He had writhed in torture at
the sight of every shiny, purring automobile that had ever passed him
with its load of well-groomed men and women. A clean, stiff collar was
to Billy as a red rag to a bull. Cleanliness, success, opulence, decency,
spelled but one thing to Billy--physical weakness; and he hated
physical weakness. His idea of indicating strength and manliness lay in
displaying as much of brutality and uncouthness as possible. To assist a
woman over a mud hole would have seemed to Billy an
acknowledgement of pusillanimity--to stick out his foot and trip her so

that she sprawled full length in it, the hall mark of bluff manliness. And
so he hated, with all