Noyes studied the sea for a while.  By and by he faced inboard.  “Kieran, I’ve seen ships before, even if I do get sea-sick sometimes.  Was that an accident to-day, that block dropping on you—­almost?”

“Accident?” The recurring smile flashed anew.  “That’s the third I’ve side-stepped in two days.  I was in the bottom of a tank yesterday when a little hammer weighing about ten pounds happened to fall in.  In the old clipper-ship days, Mr. Noyes, a great trick was to send a man out on the end of a yard in heavy weather and get the man at the wheel to snap him overboard.  On steamers, of course, we have no yards, and so little items like spanners and wrenches and three-sheaved blocks fall from aloft.  But that’s all right.”  The pump-man, all the while he was talking, kept fitting his dies and cutting his threads.  “I’ve got no kick coming.  I came aboard this ship with my eyes open, and I’m keeping ’em open”—­he laughed softly—­“so I won’t be carried ashore with ’em closed.”

Noyes took a close look at the pump-man.  The trick of light speech, his casual manner in speaking of serious things, was not unbecoming, but this was a more purposeful sort of person than he had reckoned; a more set man physically, a more serious man morally, than he had thought.  There was more beef to him, too, than ever he guessed; and the face was less oval, the jaw more heavily hung.  The under teeth, biting upward, were well outside the upper.

“But the bosun—­he’s altogether too huge,” mused Noyes.  He threw away his cigar.  “Kieran, you’re too good a man to be manhandled by that brute.  You say so, and I’ll stop the fight.  I’ve got influence in the office, and I think I could present the matter to the captain so that he will pull the bosun off.”

“Thank you, Mr. Noyes, but you mustn’t.  I’d rather get beat to a pulp than crawl.  All I ask is that nobody reaches over and taps me on the back of the skull with a four-pound hammer or some other useful little article while I’m busy with him.”

“And when is it coming off?”

“Soon’s we go off watch—­eight bells.”

“Eight bells?  Four o’clock.”  Noyes drew out his watch.  “Why, it’s nine minutes to that now.”

“So near?  Then I’d better begin to knock off, if I’m going to wash off and be ready in time, hadn’t I?” He finished his thread, gathered up his stock and dies, and strolled off.

Noyes headed for the bridge.  The captain’s glance, as he came up the ladder, was not at all encouraging; but Noyes was already weary of the captain’s hectoring glances.

“Captain, are you going to let it go on?” he asked, and not too deferentially.

“Let what go on?”

“That fight.  They’re going to have it out in a few minutes.  Aft there—­look.”

“I’m not looking.  And I’ll take good care I don’t—­not in that direction.  And what I don’t see I can’t stop, can I?  Besides, I hope he beats that pump-man to a jelly.”