McGarver, the straw-boss, would always lie awake to enjoy a good brisk indecent story, but he liked Wrennie’s admiration of him, so, lunging with his bull-like head out of his berth, he snorted: 

“Hey, you, Pete, it’s time to pound your ear.  Cut it out.”

Wrennie called down, sternly, “I ain’t no theological student, Pete, and I don’t mind profanity, but I wish you wouldn’t talk like a garbage-scow.”

“Hey, Poicy, did yuh bring your dictionary?” Pete bellowed to Tim, two feet distant from him.  To Wrennie, “Say, Gladys, ain’t you afraid one of them long woids like, t’eological, will turn around and bite you right on the wrist?”

“Dry up!” irritatedly snapped a Canadian.

“Aw, cut it out, you—­,” groaned another.

“Shut up,” added McGarver, the straw-boss.  “Both of you.”  Raging:  “Gwan to bed, Pete, or I’ll beat your block clean off.  I mean it, see? Hear me?”

Yes, Pete heard him.  Doubtless the first officer on the bridge heard, too, and perhaps the inhabitants of Newfoundland.  But Pete took his time in scratching the back of his neck and stretching before he crawled into his berth.  For half an hour he talked softly to Tim, for Wrennie’s benefit, stating his belief that Satan, the head boss, had once thrown overboard a Jew much like Wrennie, and was likely thus to serve Wrennie, too.  Tim pictured the result when, after the capsizing of the steamer which would undoubtedly occur if this long sickening motion kept up, Wrennie had to take to a boat with Satan.

The fingers of Wrennie curled into shape for strangling some one.

When Pete was asleep he worried off into thin slumber.

Then, there was Satan, the head boss, jerking him out of his berth, stirring his cramped joints to another dawn of drudgery—­two hours of work and two of waiting before the daily eight-o’clock insult called breakfast.  He tugged on his shoes, marveling at Mr. Wrenn’s really being there, at his sitting in cramped stoop on the side of a berth in a dark filthy place that went up and down like a freight elevator, subject to the orders of persons whom he did not in the least like.

Through the damp gray sea-air he staggered hungrily along the gangway to the hatch amidships, and trembled down the iron ladder to McGarver’s crew ’tween-decks.

First, watering the steers.  Sickened by walking backward with pails of water he carried till he could see and think of nothing in the world save the water-butt, the puddle in front of it, and the cattlemen mercilessly dipping out pails there, through centuries that would never end.  How those steers did drink!

McGarver’s favorite bull, which he called “the Grenadier,” took ten pails and still persisted in leering with dripping gray mouth beyond the headboard, trying to reach more.  As Wrennie was carrying a pail to the heifers beyond, the Grenadier’s horn caught and tore his overalls.  The boat lurched.  The pail whirled out of his hand.  He grasped an iron stanchion and kicked the Grenadier in the jaw till the steer backed off, a reformed character.