I do not know why I tackled the captain. I did not want wages, for Bilk had made it clear to me that if I signed the steamer’s roll I thereby precluded the possibility of hauling the _Moon’s_ commander over the coals for refusing to set me ashore and keeping me in practical peonage, and I would not have missed making it warm for that coarse ruffian for half the cattle my dad had left me. I dare say it was a flickering up of the smoldering fires of hostility. Neither Tupper nor Speer ever came close to me that I did not have to fight down an impulse to club them with whatever was nearest my hand. And this day I unthinkingly baited Captain Speer, much as I feared the weight of his ready fists. I was coiling a rope just aft of the wheel-house, when the captain paced along the deck, and turned a cold eye upon me. I dropped the rope. “Say,” I asked bluntly, and perhaps more belligerently than was wise, “do I get paid wages for the work I’m doing?” “Hey? Get paid?” he growled. Then he lifted up his voice and swore: “By God, you pay for the grub you eat and the clothes you got on an’ we’ll talk about wages. You—you double-dyed, gilt-edged, son-of-a-feather-duster!” This is not a literal transcription of Captain Speer’s expletives, but it will have to serve. His rendering was of the sort frowned upon in polite literature, being altogether unprintable. Never did the captain sacrifice force to elegancy of expression. I have heard it said, and the statement is indubitably true, that he could swear louder and faster and longer than any two men between Benton and New Orleans. With the full tide of his reviling upon me, he lurched forward, his big-knuckled fingers reaching for my throat. I turned to dart around the wheel-house; Tupper, grinning maliciously, showed up from that quarter. And when I swung about to go the other way I tripped and Speer nailed me before I could dodge again. Like a cat pawing a helpless mouse, he slammed me against a deck-house wall, and I should doubtless have had my head well worked over but for a timely interruption. Aft from the wheel-house a promenade deck ran over the cabin roofs, whereon the passengers lounged when they cared to sun themselves. The captain, the mate, and myself were on the narrow deck below. From just over our heads came the voice of feminine disapproval; at which Captain Speer let go my throat, and Tupper paused with his foot drawn back to kick me. “You’re a pretty pair of brutes, indeed you are!” The girl, a small serious-faced thing, her brown hair standing out in wind-blown wisps from under a peaked cap, leaned over the rail and flung down the words hotly, stamping one small foot to lend emphasis to her observation. “You may be typical ship’s officers,” she went on scornfully, “but you are certainly not _men_.” The two of them stood abashed, like pickpockets taken in the act, and a man by the girl’s side put in a word.