The Mucker Read online

  CHAPTER II. SHANGHAIED

  WHEN Billy opened his eyes again he could not recall, for the instant,very much of his recent past. At last he remembered with painful regretthe drunken sailor it had been his intention to roll. He felt deeplychagrined that his rightful prey should have escaped him. He couldn'tunderstand how it had happened.

  "This Frisco booze must be something fierce," thought Billy.

  His head ached frightfully and he was very sick. So sick that the roomin which he lay seemed to be rising and falling in a horribly realisticmanner. Every time it dropped it brought Billy's stomach nearly to hismouth.

  Billy shut his eyes. Still the awful sensation. Billy groaned. He neverhad been so sick in all his life before, and, my, how his poor head didhurt. Finding that it only seemed to make matters worse when he closedhis eyes Billy opened them again.

  He looked about the room in which he lay. He found it a stuffy holefilled with bunks in tiers three deep around the sides. In the center ofthe room was a table. Above the table a lamp hung suspended from one ofthe wooden beams of the ceiling.

  The lamp arrested Billy's attention. It was swinging back and forthrather violently. This could not be a hallucination. The room might seemto be rising and falling, but that lamp could not seem to be swingingaround in any such manner if it were not really and truly swinging. Hecouldn't account for it. Again he shut his eyes for a moment. When heopened them to look again at the lamp he found it still swung as before.

  Cautiously he slid from his bunk to the floor. It was with difficultythat he kept his feet. Still that might be but the effects of theliquor. At last he reached the table to which he clung for support whilehe extended one hand toward the lamp.

  There was no longer any doubt! The lamp was beating back and forth likethe clapper of a great bell. Where was he? Billy sought a window. Hefound some little round, glass-covered holes near the low ceiling at oneside of the room. It was only at the greatest risk to life and limb thathe managed to crawl on all fours to one of them.

  As he straightened up and glanced through he was appalled at thesight that met his eyes. As far as he could see there was naught but atumbling waste of water. And then the truth of what had happened to himbroke upon his understanding.

  "An' I was goin' to roll that guy!" he muttered in helplessbewilderment. "I was a-goin' to roll him, and now look here wot he hasdone to me!"

  At that moment a light appeared above as the hatch was raised, and Billysaw the feet and legs of a large man descending the ladder from above.When the newcomer reached the floor and turned to look about his eyesmet Billy's, and Billy saw that it was his host of the previous evening.

  "Well, my hearty, how goes it?" asked the stranger.

  "You pulled it off pretty slick," said Billy.

  "What do you mean?" asked the other with a frown.

  "Come off," said Billy; "you know what I mean."

  "Look here," replied the other coldly. "Don't you forget that I'm mateof this ship, an' that you want to speak respectful to me if you ain'tlookin' for trouble. My name's MR. Ward, an' when you speak to me saySIR. Understand?"

  Billy scratched his head, and blinked his eyes. He never before hadbeen spoken to in any such fashion--at least not since he had put on theavoirdupois of manhood. His head ached horribly and he was sick to hisstomach--frightfully sick. His mind was more upon his physical sufferingthan upon what the mate was saying, so that quite a perceptible intervalof time elapsed before the true dimensions of the affront to his dignitycommenced to percolate into the befogged and pain-racked convolutions ofhis brain.

  The mate thought that his bluster had bluffed the new hand. That waswhat he had come below to accomplish. Experience had taught him that anearly lesson in discipline and subordination saved unpleasant encountersin the future. He also had learned that there is no better time to puta bluff of this nature across than when the victim is suffering from theafter-effects of whiskey and a drug--mentality, vitality, and courageare then at their lowest ebb. A brave man often is reduced to thepitiful condition of a yellow dog when nausea sits astride his stomach.

  But the mate was not acquainted with Billy Byrne of Kelly's gang.Billy's brain was befuddled, so that it took some time for an idea towriggle its way through, but his courage was all there, and all to thegood. Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough. Whenhe fought, his methods would have brought a flush of shame to the faceof His Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than from before.He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers thathe could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women.He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all thatwas dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of abrave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward.He was what he was because of training and environment. He knew no othermethods; no other code. Whatever the meager ethics of his kind he wouldhave lived up to them to the death. He never had squealed on a pal,and he never had left a wounded friend to fall into the hands of theenemy--the police.

  Nor had he ever let a man speak to him, as the mate had spoken, and getaway with it, and so, while he did not act as quickly as would have beenhis wont had his brain been clear, he did act; but the interval of timehad led the mate into an erroneous conception of its cause, and intoa further rash show of authority, and had thrown him off his guard aswell.

  "What you need," said the mate, advancing toward Billy, "is a bash onthe beezer. It'll help you remember that you ain't nothin' but a dirtydamn landlubber, an' when your betters come around you'll--"

  But what Billy would have done in the presence of his betters remainedstillborn in the mate's imagination in the face of what Billy reallydid do to his better as that worthy swung a sudden, vicious blow at themucker's face.

  Billy Byrne had not been scrapping with third- and fourth-rate heavies,and sparring with real, live ones for nothing. The mate's fist whistledthrough empty air; the blear-eyed hunk of clay that had seemed sucheasy prey to him was metamorphosed on the instant into an alert, catlikebundle of steel sinews, and Billy Byrne swung that awful right with thepile-driver weight, that even The Big Smoke himself had acknowledgedrespect for, straight to the short ribs of his antagonist.

  With a screech of surprise and pain the mate crumpled in the far cornerof the forecastle, rammed halfway beneath a bunk by the force of theterrific blow. Like a tiger Billy Byrne was after him, and dragging theman out into the center of the floor space he beat and mauled him untilhis victim's blood-curdling shrieks echoed through the ship from stem tostern.

  When the captain, followed by a half-dozen seamen rushed down thecompanionway, he found Billy sitting astride the prostrate form of themate. His great fingers circled the man's throat, and with mighty blowshe was dashing the fellow's head against the hard floor. Another momentand murder would have been complete.

  "Avast there!" cried the captain, and as though to punctuate his remarkhe swung the heavy stick he usually carried full upon the back ofBilly's head. It was that blow that saved the mate's life, for whenBilly came to he found himself in a dark and smelly hole, chained andpadlocked to a heavy stanchion.

  They kept Billy there for a week; but every day the captain visited himin an attempt to show him the error of his way. The medium used by theskipper for impressing his ideas of discipline upon Billy was a large,hard stick. At the end of the week it was necessary to carry Billy aboveto keep the rats from devouring him, for the continued beatings andstarvation had reduced him to little more than an unconscious mass ofraw and bleeding meat.

  "There," remarked the skipper, as he viewed his work by the light ofday, "I guess that fellow'll know his place next time an officer an' agentleman speaks to him."

  That Billy survived is one of the hitherto unrecorded miracles of thepower of matter over mind. A man of intellect, of imagination, a beingof nerves, would have succumbed to the shock alone; but Billy was not asthese. He simply lay still and thoughtless, except for half-f
ormed ideasof revenge, until Nature, unaided, built up what the captain had soruthlessly torn down.

  Ten days after they brought him up from the hold Billy was limpingabout the deck of the Halfmoon doing light manual labor. From the othersailors aboard he learned that he was not the only member of the crewwho had been shanghaied. Aside from a half-dozen reckless men from thecriminal classes who had signed voluntarily, either because they couldnot get a berth upon a decent ship, or desired to flit as quietly fromthe law zone of the United States as possible, not a man was there whohad been signed regularly.

  They were as tough and vicious a lot as Fate ever had foregathered inone forecastle, and with them Billy Byrne felt perfectly at home. Hisearly threats of awful vengeance to be wreaked upon the mate and skipperhad subsided with the rough but sensible advice of his messmates. Themate, for his part, gave no indication of harboring the assault thatBilly had made upon him other than to assign the most dangerous ordisagreeable duties of the ship to the mucker whenever it was possibleto do so; but the result of this was to hasten Billy's nauticaleducation, and keep him in excellent physical trim.

  All traces of alcohol had long since vanished from the young man'ssystem. His face showed the effects of his enforced abstemiousness ina marked degree. The red, puffy, blotchy complexion had given way to aclear, tanned skin; bright eyes supplanted the bleary, bloodshot thingsthat had given the bestial expression to his face in the past. Hisfeatures, always regular and strong, had taken on a peculiarly refineddignity from the salt air, the clean life, and the dangerous occupationof the deep-sea sailor, that would have put Kelly's gang to a pinch tohave recognized their erstwhile crony had he suddenly appeared in theirmidst in the alley back of the feed-store on Grand Avenue.

  With the new life Billy found himself taking on a new character. Hesurprised himself singing at his work--he whose whole life up to now hadbeen devoted to dodging honest labor--whose motto had been: Theworld owes me a living, and it's up to me to collect it. Also, he wassurprised to discover that he liked to work, that he took keen pride instriving to outdo the men who worked with him, and this spirit, despitethe suspicion which the captain entertained of Billy since the episodeof the forecastle, went far to making his life more endurable on boardthe Halfmoon, for workers such as the mucker developed into are not tobe sneezed at, and though he had little idea of subordination it wasworth putting up with something to keep him in condition to work. It wasthis line of reasoning that saved Billy's skull on one or two occasionswhen his impudence had been sufficient to have provoked the skipper toa personal assault upon him under ordinary conditions; and Mr. Ward,having tasted of Billy's medicine once, had no craving for anotherencounter with him that would entail personal conflict.

  The entire crew was made up of ruffians and unhung murderers, butSkipper Simms had had little experience with seamen of any other ilk,so he handled them roughshod, using his horny fist, and the short, heavystick that he habitually carried, in lieu of argument; but with theexception 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--therewas no honor among them, no virtue, no kindliness, no decency. With themBilly was at home--he scarcely missed the old gang. He made his friendsamong them, and his enemies. He picked quarrels, as had been his waysince childhood. His science and his great strength, together with hisendless stock of underhand tricks brought him out of each encounterwith fresh laurels. Presently he found it difficult to pick a fight--hismessmates had had enough of him. They left him severely alone.

  These ofttimes bloody battles engendered no deep-seated hatred in thehearts of the defeated. They were part of the day's work and play of thehalf-brutes that Skipper Simms had gathered together. There was only oneman aboard whom Billy really hated. That was the passenger, and Billyhated him, not because of anything that the man had said or done toBilly, for he had never even so much as spoken to the mucker, butbecause of the fine clothes and superior air which marked him plainly toBilly 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 atthe sight of every shiny, purring automobile that had ever passed himwith its load of well-groomed men and women. A clean, stiff collarwas to Billy as a red rag to a bull. Cleanliness, success, opulence,decency, spelled but one thing to Billy--physical weakness; and he hatedphysical weakness. His idea of indicating strength and manliness lay indisplaying as much of brutality and uncouthness as possible. To assista woman over a mud hole would have seemed to Billy an acknowledgement ofpusillanimity--to stick out his foot and trip her so that she sprawledfull length in it, the hall-mark of bluff manliness. And so he hated,with all the strength of a strong nature, the immaculate, courteous,well-bred man who paced the deck each day smoking a fragrant cigar afterhis meals.

  Inwardly he wondered what the dude was doing on board such a vessel asthe Halfmoon, and marveled that so weak a thing dared venture among realmen. Billy's contempt caused him to notice the passenger more than hewould have been ready to admit. He saw that the man's face was handsome,but there was an unpleasant shiftiness to his brown eyes; and then,entirely outside of his former reasons for hating him, Billy came toloathe him intuitively, as one who was not to be trusted. Finally hisdislike for the man became an obsession. He haunted, when disciplinepermitted, that part of the vessel where he would be most likely toencounter the object of his wrath, hoping, always hoping, that the"dude" would give him some slight pretext for "pushing in his mush," asBilly would so picturesquely have worded it.

  He was loitering about the deck for this purpose one evening when heoverheard part of a low-voiced conversation between the object of hiswrath and Skipper Simms--just enough to set him to wondering what wasdoing, and to show him that whatever it might be it was crooked and thatthe immaculate passenger and Skipper Simms were both "in on it."

  He questioned "Bony" Sawyer and "Red" Sanders, but neither had nearly asmuch information as Billy himself, and so the Halfmoon came to Honoluluand lay at anchor some hundred yards from a stanch, trim, white yacht,and none knew, other than the Halfmoon's officers and her singlepassenger, the real mission of the harmless-looking little brigantine.