All hands working together made us better acquainted with the men of the starboard watch. Axel and I developed a lasting friendship, and of course Old Smith joined the higher councils of our watch. Hitchen and Mike and Tommy proved to be a great team of kidders, and with Australia, of our side, formed a dandy quartette, singing such old time favorites as "Tom Bowling" and "All in the Downs." Hitchen, a very superior sort of sailor, an Englishman, reticent about himself, but a volume of information about the ports of the world, was a great addition to our life aboard. In fact the men of both watches were sea worn and tired of each other, and we welcomed the new contact with our shipmates. Add to this the unusual sights of the shore and the fresh provisions, as well as the possibility for rational sleep, and sailors will know what I mean when I say that we were a very happy lot of men aboard the Fuller.
Scouse had a large mouth organ, "Made in Germany," a gaudy tin affair well fitted for his capacious maw. Tony had an accordion, and no one could deny that we were a lively crowd forward. On the other hand the people aft were shrouded in gloom. The mate lived very much alone and Captain Nichols was separated by more than a bulkhead from his first officer. Chips was also a lonesome figure, dining in dreary state at the second table. Tommy said that since the second mate had gone, the Jap boy felt it beneath his dignity to wait on Chips, and the lanky carpenter found the table set with all that he was to have at one load, soup, meat, dessert, etc. "I wisht they'd let me at it once," said Joe, his mouth watering at the mention of dessert.
The second mate did not return on board the night following his racket with the mate, and we were in hopes he would quit the ship. Our wishes were realized, for the afternoon of the second day in port, while we were in the midst of breaking out the coal in the main hatch, Mr. Stoddard came to the coaming and looked down on the grimy crowd shoveling coal. He carried a dilapidated satchel and had evidently been paid off by the skipper.
"So long, you dirty bums!" he called down, sending a squirt of tobacco juice into the midst of the coal-dust and sweat-covered gang.
Tony, who was in the hatch, dropped his round-nosed shovel, and picking up a lump of coal hove it at Mr. Stoddard, just missing him as he dodged back from the coaming.
"Wait until I get you ashore, you dirty —— —— —— ——," shouted our ex-officer, shaking his fist at the hatch as he ran over the gangway.
"Thank heaven he's gone," I remarked to Frenchy, both of us looking down at the play from our perch on the fore tops'l yard where we were unreeving the downhauls.
"A good thing he's done with us, and the ship saves thirty dollars a month while we are in port," was Frenchy's wise comment.
That night Tony and Tommy went ashore for the purpose of finding Mr. Stoddard and beating him up. The ex-second mate was boarding in a Chinese house in Beretania Street, according to reports from some of the Kanakas, and the two avengers trailed him from that place to the Criterion saloon.