ut not vicious. Still full of the
life and strength of the open range....

Then we scattered bits of the broken bales of their prepared food, along
the runway, to lure them ... a few were led aboard thus. But the captain
cried with oaths that they didn't have time to make a coaxing-party of
the job....

At last the donkey-engine was started, forward. A small cable was run
through a block, and, fastened by their halters around their horns, one
after the other the steers, now bellowing in great terror, their eyes
popping for fear--were hoisted up in the air, poised on high, kicking,
then swung down, and on deck.

You had to keep well from under each one as he descended, or suffer the
befouling consequences of his fear ... we had great laughter over
several men who came within the explosive radius ... till the mate hit
on the device of tying each beast's tail close before he was jerked up
into the air.

What a pandemonium ... shouting ... swearing ... whistles blowing
signals ... the chugging respiration of the labouring donkey-engine ...
and then the attempted stampede of each trembling, fear-crazy animal as
soon as he rose four-footed, on deck, after his ride through the sky....

* * * * *

The ship was crammed as full as Noah's ark. In the holds and on the main
deck stood the steers, in long rows....

On the upper deck, exposed to all the weather, were housed the more
tractable sheep, who had, without objection, bleated their way aboard
docilely up the runway--behind their black ram ... that the cattle-boss
had to help on a bit, by pulling him the few first yards by his curly
horns.

* * * * *

As we swam by in the fading day, a pale ghost of a moon was already up.
Ghostly rows of knee-ing trees stood out like live things in the
river....

Under the night, off at sea, what with the mooing and baaing through all
the ship, it seemed like an absurd farmyard that had somehow got on the
ocean.

* * * * *

There were two quarters for the men ... a place under the forecastle
head, forward--as well as the after-quarters. Nippers and I had been
separated--he staying aft, while I took up my bunk forward.

* * * * *

But the men on the boat, the few that stick in my memory as distinct
personages:

There was the bloated, fat Scotch boy, whom we called just Fatty, a
sheepherder by calling.