Now whether Mulligan Jacobs just happened along, or whether he was deliberately scouting, I do not know. I tell what occurred. Up-and-down the side of the ’midship-house is a ladder. And up this ladder Mulligan Jacobs climbed so noiselessly that I was not aware of his presence until I heard Mr. Pike snarl:
Then I saw Mulligan Jacobs in the gloom, within two yards of the mate.
“What’s it to you?” Mulligan Jacobs snarled back. The voices below hushed. I knew every man stood there tense and listening. No; the philosophers have not yet explained Mulligan Jacobs. There is something more to him than the last word has said in any book. He stood there in the darkness, a fragile creature with curvature of the spine, facing alone the first mate, and he was not afraid.
Mr. Pike cursed him with fearful, unrepeatable words, and again demanded what he was doing there.
“I left me plug of tobacco here when I was coiling down last,” said the little twisted man—no; he did not say it. He spat it out like so much venom.
“Get off of here, or I’ll throw you off, you and your tobacco,” raged the mate.
Mulligan Jacobs lurched closer to Mr. Pike, and in the gloom and with the roll of the ship swayed in the other’s face.
“By God, Jacobs!” was all the mate could say.
“You old stiff,” was all the terrible little cripple could retort.
Mr. Pike gripped him by the collar and swung him in the air.
“Are you goin’ down?—or am I goin’ to throw you down?” the mate demanded.
I cannot describe their manner of utterance. It was that of wild beasts.
“I ain’t ate outa your hand yet, have I?” was the reply.
Mr. Pike tried to say something, still holding the cripple suspended, but he could do no more than strangle in his impotence of rage.
“You’re an old stiff, an old stiff, an old stiff,” Mulligan Jacobs chanted, equally incoherent and unimaginative with brutish fury.
“Say it again and over you go,” the mate managed to enunciate thickly.
“You’re an old stiff,” gasped Mulligan Jacobs. He was flung. He soared through the air with the might of the fling, and even as he soared and fell through the darkness he reiterated:
He fell among the men on Number Two hatch, and there were confusion and movement below, and groans.
Mr. Pike paced up and down the narrow house and gritted his teeth. Then he paused. He leaned his arms on the bridge-rail, rested his head on his arms for a full minute, then groaned: