I've had three ribs broken; I've got a scar from a
knife on my cheek; and I've been stabbed bad enough, half a dozen times,
to lay me up."
Here he gave a sort of desperate laugh, as if the notion of so much
misery and such various mutilation were too grotesque not to be amusing.
"Well, what can you do?" he went on. "If you don't strike, the men think
you're afraid of them; and so you have to begin hard and go on hard. I
always tell a man, 'Now, my man, I always begin with a man the way I
mean to keep on. You do your duty and you're all right. But if you
don't'--Well, the men ain't Americans any more,--Dutch, Spaniards,
Chinese, Portuguee, and it ain't like abusing a white man."
Jonathan Tinker was plainly part of the horrible tyranny which we all
know exists on shipboard; and his listener respected him the more that,
though he had heart enough to be ashamed of it, he was too honest not to
own it.
Why did he still follow the sea? Because he did not know what else to
do. When he was younger, he used to love it, but now he hated it. Yet
there was not a prettier life in the world if you got to be captain. He
used to hope for that once, but not now; though he _thought_ he could
navigate a ship. Only let him get his family together again, and he
would--yes, he would--try to do something ashore.
No car had yet come in sight, and so the contributor suggested that they
should walk to the car-office, and look in the "Directory," which is
kept there, for the name of Hapford, in search of whom it had already
been arranged that they should renew their acquaintance on the morrow.
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