The third was young. Very young.
He knew he was young. Not one man aboard the ship missed an opportunity to tell him he was young. The captain addressed him as “young man,” the first always called him “sonny” and the chief engineer had a bibulous habit of referring to him as “my boy.”
Therefore the third was convinced that he was young and the thought was bitter.
It ate into him like acid. It gave him nightmares. He began to pray for falling hair and a falling chest. He rubbed vinegar on his face to make it look tough and weathered and he practiced scowling before the mirror so that he would have lines in his dishearteningly smooth face. Twice a day he scraped his cheeks raw in the hope that he could cultivate a beard.
But at eighteen, beards are most reluctant.
At eighteen a fair-skinned gentleman has a complexion very like the soap ads.
At eighteen nothing is so bad as to know that you are young.
Looking back, everyone knows that a boy of eighteen is not young but older than he ever will be again. However, captains and firsts and chief engineers do not look back and the third led a life of condensed misery.
His name was Bob Rowland. His hair was a pale gold color and his eyes were baby blue. He was something less than six feet tall and he was rather thin. He was handsome but he didn’t know that. He just thought he looked ungodly young. His nautical haberdashery, after the fashion of thirds, was excellent—far too good for an old tub like the Rangoon, far too good for the North China Sea and the work of loading coal at the wharves at Tsingtau.
This particular day, the third was a very unhappy fellow and he felt about a hundred—in spite of his being so young. Everything had to happen to him. The unlucky demons of the air had picked him out for an especially favorable target—probably because he was so young.
Youth had led him astray.
Had he been older he would have known about loaded dice and why he had seen the chief engineer (a Scot by the name of McGoggle and very red of face) drain the mercury out of a disused barometer.
But the third was young and the very hour he drew his pay, it had departed his life.
There had been the chief, all smiles, standing in his door just off the passageway from the pantry. The chief had a roll of bills in his hand.
“You can’t make liberty on that small change,” said the chief, looking at the third’s small bundle of bills. “Might as well have nothing as have that.”
The third considered the chief very wise. Without much more argument, the third suddenly found himself, the chief, the second and the first engineer inside the chief’s room rolling small cubes of ivory across the floor and bouncing them off the side of the transom.
The third had agreed because to agree, he thought, would make him seem old and mature, a man of the world.
The pile melted remarkably and finally there stood the third gazing down at Number Two hatch and the black-yellow longshoremen.
He stood there for some little time, all alone, feeling chilly in the dry, cold wind which rolled dustily down from Mongolia.
The third was thinking. It seemed to him a very unusual coincidence that every time the pot had gotten large, the chief had rolled out a four and a three. Never a two and a five, but a four and a three.
The third thought this remarkable, but then the third was very young.
He had wanted to send his mother some silk pongee, his sister some slippers, his girl something extraordinary and oriental so that she would know he was a traveled man of the world.
And now he had nothing.
A four and a three. A four and a three. The winches and the squeal of the loading boom seemed to say it.
Four and a three.
It was in the pit-pat of the coolies’ feet, in the singsong of their howling voices as they worked.
A four and a three.
And then the third recalled something he had heard about loaded dice.
Fate shoved the chief engineer out of the passageway a short time later. If the chief engineer had gone below, it never would have happened.
But there stood the chief engineer in his red flannel underwear and his purple carpet slippers, with a soiled cap on his head and a frayed cigar in his mouth.
He grinned, did the chief, and started to go by, his pants pocket comfortably full of American bills and the whole town full of liquor.
“Wait a minute,” said the third (he was very young).
The chief stopped, fixed a threatening eye upon Bob Rowland. The chief saw the pink cheeks and innocent, choirboy eyes. He could afford to act important and old and wise before one so very young.
“Those dice,” said the third. “I don’t think they were on the level.”
That required considerable bravery. So it did. The third was proud of himself, no matter how much his hands shook.
“So you don’t think my dice were on the level,” grated the chief, feeling very virtuous and indignant and looking very tough.
The third managed to keep the chief’s eye. “No,” he said, almost apologetically, “I don’t.”
And at that moment the chief made a tactical error. Bob Rowland might be very young but he was built and in good condition, whereas the chief had been training upon sake ever since they had left Japan.
The chief grabbed the third’s jacket front, put on a ferocious face, and shouted, “So you think my dice were crooked, do you?”
He followed the verbal barrage with a meaty left. The third was nimble.
The third went back against the rail in a dodge. The steel was a springboard. The chief was planted squarely and flat-footedly upon the plates.
Purely in self-defense, the third swung as he bounced. His fist connected with the cigar, flattened it out like an umbrella and shoved it half down the chief’s throat.
The chief crashed into the bulkhead behind, hit his head on a fire nozzle, spilled sideways and down.
The third was horrified at what he had done. He was paralyzed exactly as long as it took the rubber chief to bounce upward, and to tip his rush with a set of brass knuckles.
The third took it on the chest and hit the rail again. He swung blindly. He connected. The chief hit the bulkhead, ricocheted off the fire nozzle and again went down.
All the coolies had stopped work to stare up at the foreign devils and the sudden silence was like a fire alarm gong. And like a fireman, Captain Hardy came down the bridge ladder squirting a verbal stream.
Hardy was between them in the instant, breathing hell and damnation—but in a religious way. He had the third by the jacket and was waiting for the chief to get up.
To the third spat Hardy, “Why did you hit him?”
The chief was coming up by that time. He had artfully pocketed the brass knuckles. The chief answered. “He called me a liar and then hit me!”
The third was very young. He did not know that it is not always good policy to tell the truth to captains. Said the third:
“I did not! I said he used crooked dice!”
The words were gone now and sound travels at ten-eighty feet per second. Rowland could not call them back.
Hardy let go the third’s jacket and drew himself sadly erect. Sadly he gazed upon his third. Standing thus, Hardy resembled a raven grown into the proportions of a heron. He was very sad.
“Gambling,” said Hardy. “Gambling on the Rangoon.” There were holy tears in his voice as he said again, “Gambling . . . on my ship.” Hardy recovered with some difficulty and with several sighs. “Mr. Rowland, you will please report to my cabin as soon as you have wiped the blood from your hands.”
Rowland looked in surprise at his bleeding knuckles and when he glanced up again, Hardy was gone and McGoggle stood there gnawing upon the remains of the frayed cigar.
McGoggle had an evil (if bloody) grin. “You asked for it. Maybe when you get out of short pants you’ll know enough to keep your mouth shut. You never had a run-in with Holy Hardy, did you?”
“No,” said the third, honestly. If young, he was still an excellent third mate.
“Well, you’re in for it now. You’re in for it.” And with much head shaking and muttering, the chief went away. He evidently thought the run-in would be punishment enough for the wholly unjust accusation of crooked dice.
The third obediently went and washed his hands. He had only been with Captain Hardy for six weeks and he really did not know the man. He had heard of course that Hardy prided himself on being one of the “old school.” A captain who sailed with Bowditch in one hand and a Bible in the other. A New England clipper captain transplanted, brimstone and all, into steam.
The third reported on the bridge. He knocked and took off his cap when he entered. He was very repentant because he was so very young.
Hardy was sitting at his desk. He had his square glasses on his nose and he had to look over them to see anything. But that did not detract from the thick atmosphere and severity which hung about the man.
Hardy’s long face opened and shut as he talked. It opened now and did not shut for some time.
“Sit down, Mr. Rowland,” said Captain Hardy.
The third perched himself on the edge of a chair. The winches were going again but Hardy’s nasal voice would have carried half a mile through a booming cannonade.
Hardy had a Bible open on his roll-top desk. He fixed his glasses and looked at the Bible and began to talk.
The third was too busy worrying to hear much of it. Afterwards he could recall but one line which was repeated over and over.
“He who sins is lost. The way of Right is the hard way in this evil world. If a man falleth into sin he is lost. . . . Sin’s traps lie gaping upon every way of life. A man must be strong to follow in the way of Right. . . .”
The third kept worrying. He got the impression that it was a pretty easy thing, falling into sin. Sin was everywhere. The world exuded sin like a stevedore sweats. The third was very young. He had not known there was so much sin in this world. All this knowledge made him feel old.
Holy Hardy went on and on and on until at last the China day was growing grayer and colder through the portholes.
The third had looked intently at Hardy for so long that his face felt stiff.
Finally Hardy stood up and the third knew it was time to go. The third bowed and said “Yessir” repeatedly and gradually got himself to the door. His brain was still reeling with the knowledge that it was very easy to fall into sin. He hadn’t noticed.
Holy Hardy gave him a touching and sorrowful goodbye as though he would never see him again—when, as a matter of fact, they were sailing in the morning and Holy Hardy would be falling over his third half the day.
The third, in a daze, went down the ladder and up a passageway and past the chief engineer’s door. It swung open and there stood McGoggle with a fresh cigar unlighted in his red face.
McGoggle was used to fights but he was not used to worry. It had occurred to him after he had left Rowland that the third might noise it around the ship about the loaded dice.
“Did he talk to you?” said McGoggle, the blue passage light giving him an ungodly hue.
“Yes,” said the third, still dazed by all these facts about sin and pretty certain he would be unloaded in the first American port. Gone were his illusions all at once. Gone were his fond hopes of a command.
The third was young.
He became a little bitter as he looked at McGoggle. “If you hadn’t rung in those dice . . .”
McGoggle could be diplomatic if the problem presented was large enough.
“Now, my boy, I wouldn’t say that,” said the chief.
“If the second knew you used loaded dice . . .” started the third.
“Easy now, my boy,” finished the chief, glancing hurriedly up and down the passageway, afraid they would be overheard.
The chief thought very quickly. He knew that bribery would fail here. He made quite a large sum every month, and he didn’t intend his future chances to be ruined by the third. As he stood there looking at the somewhat distressed face of Bob Rowland, it was plain to the chief that he must sacrifice some of his profit. He would take Rowland ashore and get him drunk and see to it that Rowland was still ashore when the Rangoon sailed.
A thousand a month clear profit from officers and crew was worth considerable sacrifice to the chief.
And Bob Rowland was very young.
“Now, my boy,” said the chief, hardly pausing in his remarks so quick was his brain, “you need a good time to forget all of this. A good, quiet time. I know how it is. I was young once, myself. What say we go ashore, eh? The party is on me. All on me!”
Bob Rowland should have seen through this but he was very young. It was such a mark of favor that it did strange things to his wits. No officer had ever invited him for a party before.
He did not answer. He was too stunned. He did not have to answer because the chief was already halfway into his shirt—having some difficulty getting his cap through the buttoned neck.
Rowland had not even answered by the time the chief had him by the arm and was steering him down the ladder toward the gangway.
The third’s doom was sealed.
To be continued
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