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Page 103
"I was thinking of something else," said the Red Un, still staring
at the wall. The Second followed his eye. The Red Un was gazing
intently at the sign which said: "Cable crossing! Do not anchor
here!"
As the Second slammed out, the Chief crawled from his manhole and
struggled out of his greasy overalls. Except for his face, he was
quite tidy. He ran an eye down the port tunnel, where the shaft
revolved so swiftly that it seemed to be standing still, to where at
the after end came the racing of the screw as it lifted, bearded
with scud, out of the water.
"It looks like weather to-night," he observed, with a twinkle, to
the Fourth. "There'll aye be air wanted." But the Fourth was gazing
at a steam gauge.
III
The Red Un's story, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts--his
temptation, his fall and his redemption. All lives are so divided: a
step back; a plunge; and then, in desperation and despair, a little
climb up God's ladder.
Seven days the liner lay in New York--seven days of early autumn
heat, of blistering decks, of drunken and deserting trimmers, of
creaking gear and grime of coal-dust. The cabin which held the Red
Un and the Purser's boy was breathless. On Sunday the four ship's
boys went to Coney Island and lay in the surf half the afternoon.
The bliss of the water on their thin young legs and scrawny bodies
was Heaven. They did not swim; they lay inert, letting the waves
move them about, and out of the depths of a deep content making
caustic comments about the human form as revealed by the relentless
sea.
"That's a pippin!" they would say; or, "My aunt! looks at his legs!"
They voiced their opinions audibly and were ready to back them up
with flight or fight.
It was there that the Red Un saw the little girl. She had come from
a machine, and her mother stood near. She was not a Coney Islander.
She was first-cabin certainly--silk stockings on her thin ankles,
sheer white frock; no jewelry. She took a snapshot of the four
boys--to their discomfiture--and walked away while they were still
writhing.
"That for mine!" said the Red Un in one of his rare enthusiasms.
They had supper--a sandwich and a glass of beer; they would have
preferred pop, but what deep-water man on shore drinks pop?--and
made their way back to the ship by moonlight. The Red Un was terse
in his speech on the car: mostly he ate peanuts abstractedly. If he
evolved any clear idea out of the chaos of his mind it was to wish
she had snapped him in his uniform with the brass buttons.
The heat continued; the men in the stokehole, keeping up only enough
steam for the dynamos and donkey engines, took turns under the
ventilators or crawled up to the boatdeck at dusk, too exhausted to
dress and go ashore. The swimmers were overboard in the cool river
with the first shadows of night; the Quartermaster, so old that he
dyed his hair for fear he'd be superannuated, lowered his lean body
hand over hand down a rope and sat by the hour on a stringpiece of
the dock, with the water laving his hairy and tattooed old breast.
The Red Un was forbidden the river. To be honest, he was rather
relieved--not twice does a man dare the river god, having once been
crowned with his slime and water-weed. When the boy grew very hot
he slipped into a second-cabin shower, and stood for luxurious
minutes with streams running off his nose and the ends of his
fingers and splashing about his bony ankles.
Then, one night, some of the men took as many passengers' lifebelts
and went in. The immediate result was fun combined with safety; the
secondary result was placards over the ship and the dock, forbidding
the use of the ship's lifebelts by the crew.
From that moment the Red Un was possessed for the river and a
lifebelt. So were the other three. The signs were responsible.
Permitted, a ship's lifebelt was a subterfuge of the cowardly,
white-livered skunks who were afraid of a little water; forbidden, a
ship's lifebelt took on the qualities of enemy's property--to be
reconnoitred, assaulted, captured and turned to personal advantage.
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