Tod blinked. The words were so different from what he had expected. "What'll I do?" he asked. "I'm new at this game, but I want to begin right. You tell me where to start and I'll light in."
The Tattooed Man, with one muscular arm on the drain of the trough, turned and looked the boy steadily in the eye. "Sufferin' tripe! Ain't you never been on a ship before?"
Tod shook his head.
The cook heaved a deep sigh. "Gut me, if I don't have the worst luck! Well, you don't look quite so bad as the Chink, anyway. Here—put on the Java."
Tod gave him a questioning glance. "Java?"
"Sufferin' fish hooks," exclaimed the cook. "Where was you raised—on a cow farm?" He looked the boy up and down. "H—m! A regular dude, a swell, a macaroni. What's your name?"
"Joseph Todhunter Mor—" Tod stopped. Did he want to tell his name?
"H-m! Well, Joe Macaroni, you got t' work on this here job. Dive in!"
As Tod worked there in the close quarters of the galley, getting the watch's breakfast for six o'clock, he cast surreptitious glances at the cook. He wondered what story lay back of this strange figure. His age, Tod reflected, might be anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five; certainly he had not always cooked, for his great body was brawn and muscle, without an ounce of fat upon it. This Tod could see when the heat of the stove made the man throw off his jumper to reveal the twisting dragons upon his herculean frame. Between the faint red-and-blue figures, the skin gleamed satin-white. He seemed out of place there, dexterously lifting a kettle or pan with his enormous biceps; rather should he have been climbing some ship's rigging in tropic waters, his two hundred thirty or so pounds of solid healthy flesh standing out against a Southern sky. His tawny hair was cut short. His eyes, Tod felt, were clear and strong—and hard.
At four bells, the crew brought their mess gear to the galley door to receive their hand-out. Only in rough weather, the cook informed him, was chow taken to them in the forecastle. At seven o'clock, Tod, in a clean white coat, served breakfast to the officers in the cabin aft. He covered the green baize table with a red-and-white cloth, set the plates against the fiddle, which in rough weather served to keep the dishes off the floor, and on the stroke of seven set a covered dish of hot cereal before the captain's place.
The commander of the Araby, clad in officer's blue serge, was seated in one of the five permanently fixed swivel chairs; he glanced at the new boy as if he had never seen him before, and truth to tell, Tod was ready to admit that their meeting of the previous night had probably been forgotten. The black-bearded first mate, upon the captain's right, watched him with dark eyes beneath dark brows, but said no word. The chief engineer, upon the left, was a pleasant, rosy-cheeked Scotchman who hailed from Glasgow and wanted everyone to know it. Being deaf, he talked in a loud, high voice.
The conversation that was tossed across the table between hasty gulps of coffee was scarcely the sort that Tod's firelit dreams had led him to expect upon a glorious ship in harbour. When the captain and mate coupled freights and cargoes and tonnage with the name of some glamorous port beyond the horizon, they did so in terms of dollars and cents. Confronted thus with sordid reality, the new mess boy found it a moment of corroding disillusion.
He was pouring the steaming coffee with a listless hand when a startled oath from the first mate brought him to a halt. "What's this?" shouted the mate between his beard. "Blast my hide—it's a cockroach!" The hairy paw of the man held up the offending insect in his spoon. Tod saw his beaked nose, like a bird of prey, hook down over his snarling lips.
Tod swallowed, his knees trembled. The first mate was staring at him with his evil face twisted into the mask of a Chinese idol. "Captain, what sort o' cook has we got this trip, I asks yer. Look, do we eat this every day?"
Captain Ramsey wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Mr. Hawkes," he returned solemnly, "I ain't never seen a ship without 'em. They're like rats —and I've heard it said they leave a sinking ship, too."
"Wull ye no' eat them with th' porridge, Mr. Hawkes?" grinned the chief engineer. "Now, well I remember, whin I was in the Mary McKinnon—"
Tod did not hear more of the chief engineer's story. The first mate had reached out his arm and seized him by the tender flesh of his waist. The big fingers, closed on the boy's slim body, brought forth excruciating pain.
"Serve 'em with our meals, do you!" he hissed. "What'd I tell yer last night?"
Tod's teeth closed over his lips to keep back a cry. A hand went to his head as if he would ward off an impending blow. The other held the handle of the steaming coffee-pot. He saw the dreaded face of the mate close to his; he jerked back, at the same moment tipping the coffee-pot's boiling contents on the mate's thick legs.
With an oath, the man was on his feet. His arm shot back for a blow.
"That'll do, Mr. Hawkes," said the captain. The chief engineer had risen; he glanced thankfully at the master. "Sit down," went on the captain. "Doesn't pay to get too touchy, Mr. Hawkes."
The Scotchman smiled grimly. "Mon, d'ye think this is a win'jammer?"
"It's as bad," snapped the first officer as he took his seat. "I'll teach the kid to treat the officers' mess like this, I will."
Tod stumbled to the door; the blood had left his face; his eyes, beneath the shaded lights that burned above the table, were steel gray with hatred.
"Take the stuff away," said the captain. "And tell the cook to be more careful after this."
"Yes, sir." Tod gathered up the dishes and almost ran from the cabin.
In the galley, the Tattooed Man was flinging slices of bacon on to a platter. "Well, Joe Macaroni," he boomed in his deep rich tones, "how you gettin' along?"
"Not very well," Tod gulped as he rubbed his side. "There was a roach in the mush."
"The deuce there was! Well, we'll have to be more careful, won't we?" He laughed deep in his throat.
The new mess boy sighed. Grimly he went about the remainder of the meal; but it passed without mishap. He cleared off the table in the saloon, then made up the cabin of the captain. It was roomy and comfortable, although the chair and desk were of ancient make. A porthole opened starboard and another aft. A calendar hung on the wall; a picture of a small girl lay in a frame on the desk. Tod closed the door with the feeling that the master of the Araby was not a bad man at heart; he was weak, perhaps, and inclined to lean too much upon his first officer.
In the cabin opposite, he made the bed with the greatest care. The first mate, he knew, would only await an opportunity to vent his rage upon him. He therefore must not give the man a chance.
Day was just breaking, but there was no promise of the sun. In the gray light Tod straightened up the little cabin. Upon the walls he saw several pictures cut from a pink weekly, and a photograph of a scantily arrayed Spanish woman with tantalizing eyes, signed: To my Sweetheart—Jerry; from Lola. Other photographs, even more interesting, adorned the chest of drawers; here, at least, Mr. Hawkes rose to Tod's idea of a true sailorman.
Through the port he saw that the streets were again busy with their traffic. The trucks were covered as if for rain. "Golly, I hope not," thought Tod.
As he made his way back across the after deck, he was met by a burly longshoreman. "Are yuh the mess boy?" he asked.
At the boy's nod of assent he brought forth a white envelope which he carefully handed over. "She said to give it only to you. Now, yer sure it's for yuh?"
Tod smiled. "Yes, see? It's addressed to me: Tod Moran, mess boy of the steamship Araby. I think I know who it's from."
He glanced about him quickly. Forward, the carpenter was busy battening down the hatch. Above him, amidships, the youthful wireless operator was entering his cabin. Tod took the letter to the port alleyway and ripped it open.