“I’ll be giving you what I please.”

“You will, will you?” The cook was a good-sized man, and he held a skillet in his hand, but he was taken by surprise.  The pump-man whipped the skillet from him, whirled him about, ran him into his galley, and closed and bolted the door behind him.  A stove-pipe projected from the roof of the galley.  The pump-man climbed up, stuffed a bunch of wet cotton waste into the stovepipe, and with a valve which he seemed to be taking apart, took his stand by the taffrail.

Every few minutes he got up from his valve, put his ear to the door of the shack, and listened.  After twenty minutes or so he opened the door, lifted out the cook, and held him over the rail.  He was gulping like a catfish.

Noyes looked to see if the captain had witnessed the little comedy.  Evidently he had, for Noyes could hear him swearing.

Noyes, now on the bridge, was still chuckling over the picture of the scared cook when the pump-man came walking forward.  He was swinging a pair of Stillson wrenches, one in each hand, as if they were Indian clubs, and singing as he came: 

  “Our ship she was alaborin’ in the Gulf o’ Mexico,
  The skipper on the quarter, with eyes aloft and low. 
  Says he, ‘My bucko boys, it’s asurely goin’ to blow—­
  Take every blessed rag from her, strip her from truck to toe,
  And we’ll see what she can make of it.’ 
  And O, my eyes, it blew!  And blew and blew,
  And blew and blew!  My soul, how it did blow! 
  Aboard the Flying Walrus in the Gulf o’ Mexico.

  “The sea—­”

Noyes saw him leap to one side, even as he saw a heavy, triple-sheaved block bound on the steel deck beside him.  Noyes looked up.  Aloft was the boson, apparently rigging up some sort of a hoisting arrangement.

The pump-man stopped to pull out a handkerchief and wipe his forehead.  Then he, too, looked up.  “Fine business.  But did you think for a minute you—­that I didn’t have my eye on you?”

It took the boson a minute or two to find his tongue.  When he did, it was to say, “Young fella, did you ship for a opera singer or wot?”

“I shipped for what you’ll find my name signed against in the articles, and I’m on the job every minute.  And I’ll go on singing if it pleases me.  And if it pleases me, I’ll finish that song, too.”

“Not on this ship, you won’t, ’less you sing it in your sleep and me not in hearin’.”

“I’ll finish it on this ship, son.  And it won’t be in my sleep and you’ll be within hearing.”

A group of deck-hands snickered, and the boson pretended to climb down from the rigging.  “You swine!  What the—­”

They retreated in terror.  “It wasn’t at you we was laffin’, boson.”

“Well, see that yer don’t, yer cross-eyed whelps—­see that yer don’t.”

“And do you mean to say, you collection of squashes, that you were laughing at me?” The pump-man, still grasping a wrench in each hand, started across the deck after them.  “D’y’ mean to—­”