"But you are unfair, Emil!" cried Chris Farrington, his sensitive face
flushed and hurt. He was a slender though strongly built young fellow of
seventeen, with Yankee ancestry writ large all over him.

"Dere you go vonce again!" the Swedish sailor exploded. "My name is
Mister Johansen, und a kid of a boy like you call me 'Emil!' It vas
insulting, und comes pecause of der American ship!"

"But you call me 'Chris'!" the boy expostulated, reproachfully.

"But you vas a boy."

"Who does a man's work," Chris retorted. "And because I do a man's work
I have as much right to call you by your first name as you me. We are
all equals in this fo'castle, and you know it. When we signed for the
voyage in San Francisco, we signed as sailors on the _Sophie Sutherland_
and there was no difference made with any of us. Haven't I always done
my work? Did I ever shirk? Did you or any other man ever have to take a
wheel for me? Or a lookout? Or go aloft?"

"Chris is right," interrupted a young English sailor. "No man has had to
do a tap of his work yet. He signed as good as any of us and he's shown
himself as good--"

"Better!" broke in a Novia Scotia man. "Better than some of us! When we
struck the sealing-grounds he turned out to be next to the best
boat-steerer aboard. Only French Louis, who'd been at it for years,
could beat him. I'm only a boat-puller, and you're only a boat-puller,
too, Emil Johansen, for all your twenty-two years at sea. Why don't you