t in. The immediate result was fun combined with safety; the
secondary result was placards over the ship and the dock, forbidding
the use of the ship's lifebelts by the crew.

From that moment the Red Un was possessed for the river and a
lifebelt. So were the other three. The signs were responsible.
Permitted, a ship's lifebelt was a subterfuge of the cowardly,
white-livered skunks who were afraid of a little water; forbidden, a
ship's lifebelt took on the qualities of enemy's property--to be
reconnoitred, assaulted, captured and turned to personal advantage.

That very night, then, four small bodies, each naked save for a
lifebelt, barrelshaped and extending from breast almost to knee,
slipped over the side of the ship with awkward splashes and
proceeded to disport themselves in the river. Scolding tugs sent
waves for them to ride; ferries crawled like gigantic bugs with a
hundred staring eyes. They found the Quartermaster on a stringpiece
immersed to the neck and smoking his pipe, and surrounded him--four
small, shouting imps, floating barrels with splashing hands and
kicking feet.

"Gwan, ye little devils!" said the Quartermaster, clutching the
stringpiece and looking about in the gloom for a weapon. The Red Un,
quite safe and audacious in his cork jacket, turned over on his back
and kicked.

"Gwan yerself, Methuselah!" he sang.

They stole the old man's pipe and passed it from mouth to mouth;
they engaged him in innocent converse while one of them pinched his
bare old toe under water, crab-fashion. And at last they prepared to
shin up the rope again and sleep the sleep of the young, the
innocent and the refreshed.

The Chief was leaning over the rail, just above, smoking!

He leaned against the rail and smoked for three hours! Eight eyes,
watching him from below, failed to find anything in his face but
contemplation; eight hands puckered like a washerwoman's; eight feet
turned from medium to clean, from clean to bleached--and still the
Chief smoked on. He watched the scolding tugs and the ferryboats
that crawled over the top of the water; he stood in rapt
contemplation of the electric signs in Jersey, while the ship's
bells marked the passage of time to eternity, while the
Quartermaster slept in his bed, while the odours of the river stank
in their nostrils and the pressure of the ship's lifebelts weighed
like lead on their clammy bodies.

At eight bells--which is midnight--the Chief emptied his
twenty-f