The Minister's Charge eBook

The mate now got under his quilt, and turned his face toward Lemuel, with one hand under his cheek.  “They don’t let everybody into this room, ‘s I was tellin’ ye.  This room is for the big-bugs, you know.  Sometimes a drunk will get in, though, in spite of everything.  Why, I’ve seen a drunk at the station-house, when I’ve been gettin’ my order for a bed, stiffen up so ’t the captain himself thought he was sober; and then I’ve followed him round here, wobblin’ and corkscrewin’ all over the sidewalk; and then I’ve seen him stiffen up in the office again, and go through his bath like a little man, and get into bed as drunk as a fish; and may be wake up in the night with the man with the poker after him, and make things hum.  Well, sir, one night there was a drunk in here that thought the man with the poker was after him, and he just up and jumped out of this window behind you—­three stories from the ground.”

Lemuel could not help lifting himself in bed to look at it.  “Did it kill him?” he asked.  “Kill him? No!  You can’t kill a drunk.  One night there was a drunk got loose, here, and he run downstairs into the wood-yard, and he got hold of an axe down there, and it took five men to get that axe away from that drunk.  He was goin’ for the snakes.”

“The snakes,” repeated Lemuel.  “Are there snakes in the wood-yard?”

The other gave a laugh so loud that the attendant called out, “Less noise over there!”

“I’ll tell you about the snakes in the morning,” said the mate; and he turned his face away from Lemuel.

The stories of the drunks had made Lemuel a little anxious; but he thought that attendant would keep a sharp lookout, so that there would not really be much danger.  He was very drowsy from his bath, in spite of the hunger that tormented him, but he tried to keep awake and think what he should do after breakfast.

IX.

“Come, turn out!” said a voice in his ear, and he started up, to see the great dormitory where he had fallen asleep empty of all but himself and his friend.

“Make out a night’s rest?” asked the latter.  “Didn’t I tell you we’d be the last up?  Come along!” He preceded Lemuel, still drowsy, down the stairs into the room where they had undressed, and where the tramps were taking each his clothes from their hook, and hustling them on.

“What time is it, Johnny?” asked Lemuel’s mate of the attendant.  “I left my watch under my pillow.”

“Five o’clock,” said the man, helping the poor old fellow who had not known how to get into bed to put on his clothes.

“Well, that’s a pretty good start,” said the other.  He finished his toilet by belting himself around the waist, and “Come along, mate,” he said to Lemuel.  “I’ll show you the way to the tool-room.”

He led him through the corridor into a chamber of the basement where there were bright rows of wood-saws, and ranks of saw-horses, with heaps of the latter in different stages of construction.  “House self-supporting, as far as it can.  We don’t want to be beholden to anybody if we can help it.  We make our own horses here; but we can’t make our saws, or we would.  Ever had much practice with the wood-saw?”