Reddy interrupted Billings here loudly, with a snort of disgust, while “Bitter Root” ran his fingers through his hair before continuing.  Martin was listening intently.

“The old man arranged to have a squad of cops on all the bridges, and I begin anticipatin’ hilarities for next day.

“The news got out of course, through the secrecies of police headquarters, and when we ran up the river for our tow, it looked like every striker west of Pittsburg had his family on the docks to see the barbecue, accompanied by enough cobble-stones and scrap iron to ballast a battleship.  All we got goin’ up was repartee, but I figgered we’d need armour gettin’ back.

“We passed a hawser to the ‘Detroit,’ and I turned the gas into the tug, blowin’ for the Wells Street Bridge.  Then war began.  I leans out the door just in time to see the mob charge the bridge.  The cops clubbed ’em back, while a roar went up from the docks and roof tops that was like a bad dream.  I couldn’t see her move none though, and old man Badrich blowed again expurgatin’ himself of as nobby a line of cuss words as you’ll muster outside the cattle belt.

“’Soak ’em,’ I yells, ’give ’em all the arbitration you’ve got handy.  If she don’t open; we’ll jump her,’ and I lets out another notch, so that we went plowin’ and boilin’ towards the draw.

“It looked like we’d have to hurdle it sure enough, but the police beat the crowd back just in time.  She wasn’t clear open though, and our barge caromed off the spiles.  It was like a nigger buttin’ a persimmon tree—­we rattled off a shower of missiles like an abnormal hail storm.  Talk about your coast defence; they heaved everything at us from bad names to railroad iron, and we lost all our window glass the first clatter, while the smoke stack looked like a pretzel with cramps.

“When we scraped through I looked back with pity at the ‘Detroit’s’ crew.  She hadn’t any wheel house, and the helmsman was due to get all the attention that was comin’ to him.  They’d built up a barricade of potato sacks, chicken coops and bic-a-brac around the wheel that protected ’em somewhat, but even while I watched, some Polack filtered a brick through and laid out the quartermaster cold, and he was drug off.  Oh! it was refined and esthetic.

“Well, we run the gauntlet, presented every block with stuff rangin’ in tensile strength from insults to asphalt pavements, and noise!—­say, all the racket in the world was a whisper.  I caught a glimpse of the old man leanin’ out of the pilot house, where a window had been, his white hair bristly, and his nostrils h’isted, embellishin’ the air with surprisin’ flights of gleeful profanity.

“‘Hooray! this is livin’ he yells, spyin’ me shovelin’ the deck out from under the junk.  ‘Best scrap I’ve had in years,’ and just then some baseball player throwed in from centre field, catching him in the neck with a tomato.  Gee! that man’s an honour to the faculty of speech.