Did men dress more warmly to work
where the engines and hot fires were?

"Wait. I will return," said Lavis to her, and stepped over to where two
stewards were on guard over a gate. One, observing him, turned to the
other and remarked, with vast negligence: "A silly lot, steerage, ain't
they? Always airin' a growl about something or other, as if ship's
rulin's was a-goin' to be changed for the likes o' them!"

"I would like to get to the upper deck," interrupted Lavis.

"_You_ would like to get to the upper deck, would you? And who, may I
ask, do you take yourself for, a-trying to speak like a toff?" The man
turned his back to Lavis. "Swine!" he repeated to his mate.

Lavis glanced down at himself. He had overlooked the effect of the old
linen duster and the old cap.

"When _he_ gets to 'arbor, of course there will be tugboat visitors and
customs officers arskin' for 'im, won't they?"

The other cast half an eye on Lavis. "When the clarss will look down on
the tops o' their heads and remark: 'What a mob of 'em there! How many
of 'em did you cart along this time, Captain?' I fancy he'll have only
to cock his ear up to hear 'em."

"Bloody foreigners, most of 'em."

Lavis returned to the Polish mother. "Come," he said. "There is another
way out of here."

"Please, sir, the big, jolly Irisher--what is she saying?"

Lavis listened to the big, jolly Irish girl, who, however, was not now
so jolly. Lavis had seen a thousand like her gathering kelp on the west
Irish coast--tall, deep-bosomed, barefooted girls with black hair to the
waist, and glorious dark eyes. She was standing on the covered hatch,
and pointing at the moment to one of the ship's men who had passed.

"Wet to his knees. Where is it he should be getting wet to his knees?
And another one. And where is it they are going? And is it we that has
to stay here till that kind"--she pointed to the two stewards on guard
at the steerage gate--"are pleased to let us out? Haven't we as much
right to our lives as them that lives higher up? Five hundred of us
here, women and childther, and which of them above cares whether we live
or die?"

She pointed to a woman with her brood clinging to her hands and skirts.
"Look at that poor woman with her five childther. And that poor little
thing"--she indicated the Polish woman--"that has a husband waiting for
herself and her baby in New York. And that other one, and that one, and
that one. God in heaven, mothers with their