can give her to do, the happier she is. She's in magnificent health
and as strong as a horse. At first the hands didn't know what to make of
her; now she's friends with the whole bunch. The difficulty is to keep
her from overfamiliar intercourse with them, for though she signed on as
cook's mate, she eats in the cabin with the officers, and between the
cabin and the fo'c'sle lies a great gulf. They come and tell her about
their wives and their girls and what rotten food they've got--'Everybody
has got rotten food on board ship, you silly ass!' quoth Liosha. 'What
do you expect--sweetbreads and ices?'--and what soul-shattering
blighters they've shipped with, and what deeds of heroism (mostly
imaginary) they have performed in pursuit of their perilous calling.
They're all children, you know, when you come to the bottom of them,
these hell-tearing fellows--children afflicted with a perpetual thirst
and a craving to punch heads--and Liosha's a child, too; so there's a
kind of freemasonry between them.

"There was the devil's own row in the fo'c'sle the other evening. The
first mate went to look into it and found Liosha standing enraptured at
the hatch looking down upon a free fight. There were knives about. The
mate, being a blasphemous and pugilistic dog, soon restored order. Then
he came up to Liosha--you and Barbara should have seen her--it was
sultry, not a breath of air--and she just had on a thin bodice open at
her throat and the sleeves rolled up and a short ragged skirt and was
bareheaded.

"'Why the Hades didn't you stop 'em, missus?'

"For some reason or the other, the whole ship's company, except the
skipper and myself, call her 'missus.' She gazed on him like an ox-eyed
Juno; you know her way.

"'Why should I interfere with their enjoyment?'

"'Enjoyment--!' he gasped. 'Oh, my Gawd!' He flung out his arms and came
over to me. I was smoking against the taffrail. 'There they was trying
to cut one another's throats, and she calls it enjoyment.'

"He went off spluttering. I watched Liosha. A Dutchman--what you would
call a Swede--a hulking beggar, came up from the fo'c'sle very much the
worse for wear. Liosha says:

"'Mr. Andrews was very angry, Petersen.'

"He grinned. 'He was, missus.'

"'What was it all about?'

"He explained in his sea-English, which is not the English of that
mildewed Boarding House in South Kensington. Bill Figgins had called him
a ----, he had retaliated, and the others had taken