Noyes studied the sea for a while. By and by he faced inboard. "Kieran,
I've seen ships before, even if I do get sea-sick sometimes. Was that an
accident to-day, that block dropping on you--almost?"

"Accident?" The recurring smile flashed anew. "That's the third I've
side-stepped in two days. I was in the bottom of a tank yesterday when a
little hammer weighing about ten pounds happened to fall in. In the old
clipper-ship days, Mr. Noyes, a great trick was to send a man out on the
end of a yard in heavy weather and get the man at the wheel to snap him
overboard. On steamers, of course, we have no yards, and so little items
like spanners and wrenches and three-sheaved blocks fall from aloft. But
that's all right." The pump-man, all the while he was talking, kept
fitting his dies and cutting his threads. "I've got no kick coming. I
came aboard this ship with my eyes open, and I'm keeping 'em open"--he
laughed softly--"so I won't be carried ashore with 'em closed."

Noyes took a close look at the pump-man. The trick of light speech, his
casual manner in speaking of serious things, was not unbecoming, but
this was a more purposeful sort of person than he had reckoned; a more
set man physically, a more serious man morally, than he had thought.
There was more beef to him, too, than ever he guessed; and the face was
less oval, the jaw more heavily hung. The under teeth, biting upward,
were well outside the upper.

"But the bosun--he's altogether too huge," mused Noyes. He threw away
his cigar. "Kieran, you're too good a man to be manhandled by that
brute. You say so, and I'll stop the fight. I've got influence in the
office, and I think I could present the matter to the captain so that he
will pull the bosun off."