self ... only
that one man was a fool ... another, a silly ass ... another, a bloody
liar!

* * * * *

The launch which was to carry them to the _South Sea King_ at this
moment started nosing into the dock, on a turbulent zig-zag across the
harbour; and the men forgot their quarrelling. It brought up at the foot
of a pile and made fast.

"Come on, Skinny," Nippers urged me aggressively, "it's front seats or
nothing. Act as if you owned the boat." We thrust ahead of the others
and swarmed down the ladder ... heaping, swearing, horse-playing, the
cattlemen filled the launch from stern to bow.

Nippers had been a professional stowaway since his tenth year. He had
gone all over the world in that fashion, he had informed me. He was now
sixteen. I was almost eighteen.

His six years of rough life with rough men had brought him to premature
manhood, taught him to exhibit a saucy aplomb to everybody, to have at
his finger-ends all the knockabout resourcefulness and impudence that
the successful vagrant must acquire in order to live at all as an
individual....

* * * * *

We were the first on deck.

"Where are the cattlemen's bunks?" Nippers asked of an oiler who stood,
nonchalant, somewhat contemptuous, looking over the side at the
seething, vociferous cattlemen.

Not wasting a word on us, the oiler pointed aft over his shoulder, with
a grimy thumb.

We found a dark entrance like the mouth to a cave, that led down below.
In our hurry we lost our footing on the greasy ladder and tumbled all
the way to the bottom.

We had not time to rub our bruises. We plumped down and under the lower
tier of bunks ... just in time ... the men came pouring down
helter-skelter ... the talking, arguing, voluble swearing, and obscenity
was renewed ... all we could see, from where we lay, was a confusion of
legs to the knee, moving about....

They settled down on the benches about the table. They slackened their
talk and began smacking their lips over ship-biscuit, marmalade, and
tea.

* * * * *

Still we lay in silence. The screw of the propeller had not started
yet. We dared not come out or we would be put ashore.

* * * * *

We were hungry. We could hear their tin plates clattering and clinking
as the cattlemen ate supper, and smell the smell of cornbeef and boiled
potatoes. Our mouths ran from hunger.