“Sure!  Ve got to get to sea Sunday morning, und every liddle bit helps.”

“Well, then you’ll get along without my little bit.  If you don’t know your business, sir, I know mine.  Somebody’s got to tend that sling, and everybody’s business is nobody’s business.  If I’m not on the job a bundle of shingles may come flying down from above and kill a man, or that heavy cargo block may crack a stevedore on the head.  Who’s going to look after the broken bundles and see that they’re repacked if I don’t?  I can’t do that and mule shingles round in this hold, sir; and what’s more I’m not going to do it.”

“Den, by yimminy, you get off der ship!” the captain roared.  “I don’t vant no loafers aboard my boat, und if you tank—­”

“Stow the gab, you big Finn!  I’m through.  Pay me off and help yourself to another second mate.”  And Matt put on his coat and whistled to the winchman to steady his slingload while he climbed out of the hold.  Kjellin followed and Matt preceded him to his stateroom, where the captain paid him the few dollars he had coming to him.

“Sign clear,” he ordered, and Matt took an indelible pencil and stooped over the skipper’s desk to sign the pay roll.  As he straightened up the captain’s powerful left forearm came round Matt’s left shoulder and under his chin, tilting his head backward, while the Finn’s left knee ground into the small of his back.  He was held as in a vise, helpless, and Kjellin spoke: 

“Ven I get fresh young faler like you, an’ he quit me cold, I lick him after I pay him off.”

“I see,” Matt replied calmly.  “That makes it a plain case of assault and battery, whereas if you lick him before you pay him off, he can sue your owners.  You’re a fine, smart squarehead!”

“You bet!” Kjellin answered, and struck him a stunning blow behind the ear.  Matt, realizing his inability to wriggle out of the captain’s grasp, kicked backward with his right foot and caught the Finn squarely on the right shin, splintering the bone.  The captain cried out with the pain of it and released the pressure on Matt’s chin, whereupon the latter whirled, picked the Finn up bodily, and threw him through the stateroom door out onto the deck, where he struck the pipe railing and rebounded.  He lay where he fell, and when Matt’s brain cleared and he came out on deck the captain was moaning.

“Get up, you brute!” Matt ordered.  “You got the wrong pig by the ear that time.”

“My leg ban broken,” Kjellin whimpered.

“I wish it was your neck,” Matt replied with feeling, and bent over to examine his fallen foe.  When he grasped Kjellin by the right shoulder, however, the Finn screamed with pain, so Matt called the steward, and together they lifted him and carried him to his berth.

“I’ll bet a cooky you’re a total loss and no accident insurance,” Matt soliloquized.  “You’re not worth it, but for the sake of the owners I’ll get a doctor to look you over,” and he went ashore at once.  When the doctor had looked Thorwald Kjellin over his verdict was a broken tibia, a broken radius and a broken clavicle.