"What has been your experience with marine machinery? What were your
last three or four places?"
"My last three or four? Well, one was being second-assistant engineer on
a government collier from the Philippines with a denaturalized skipper,
and for purser a slick up-state New Yorker; and both of 'em at the old
game--grafting off the grub allowance. And that's bad."
"Eh--what's bad?"
"Grafting off the grub. Men quit a ship for poor grub quicker than they
do for poor pay. For a week after we hit San Francisco I didn't get any
further away from the dining-room of the nearest hotel--well, than"--he
turned suddenly--"than that fellow there is from here--that fat,
knock-kneed chap there who seems to have so much to say about me." The
second clerk, who was also the second head wit, yelped like a suddenly
squelched concertina and was quiet.
The new-comer, after a grave study of the knock-kneed one's person,
resumed his narrative. "Then oiler on a cattle steamer. Ever been on a
cattleman?"
"Huh!" The head clerk was scowling tremendously.
"No? You ought to try one sometime. Some are all right, but some
are"--he looked sidewise at the stenographer--"well, no matter. One
night two sweet-tempered, light-complexioned coal-passers hit me
together, one with a shovel, the other with a slice-bar. It was the
slice-bar, I think, that got me.
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