"Kill the scabs!" shrieked Mulligan, and there was murder in his eyes.
Hendrik Rutgers put his right foot firmly on the second rung of the ladder. He did it by spending seventy-five cents for the second time. Fifteen beers.
"Everybody," he said, threateningly, "wait until the schooners are on the bar!" thereby disappointing those who had hoped to ring in an extra glass during the excitement. But all that Hendrik desired was to inculcate salutary notions of discipline and obedience under circumstances that try men's souls. He yelled:
"Damn you, step back! All of you! _Back!_"
The quivering line, now two feet from the beer, did not look at the glasses full of cheer, but at the eyes full of lickings. They gazed at him, open-mouthed; they gazed and kept on gazing, two feet from the bar--the length of the arm from the beer!
Not obey? After that? There is no doubt of it; they are born!
"To the union! All together! _Drink!_" They did not observe that this man was regulating even their thirst. The reason they did not notice it was that they were so busy assuaging it.
They drank. Then they looked at Hendrik. He was a law of nature. He shook his head. They understood his "No." It was like death. To save their faces they began to clamor for free lunch.
"Get to hell out of here!" said the proprietor.
"Do you want your joint smashed?" asked Rutgers. He approached the man and looked at him from across a gulf of six inches that made escape impossible. Whatever the proprietor saw in Rutgers's eyes made him turn away.
"Come across with the free lunch," Hendrik bade the proprietor. To his men he said, "Boys, get ready!"
These men-that-were--miserable worms, scum of the earth, walking cuspidors--began to take off their armor. The bartenders were husky, but hadn't the boss commanded, _Get ready!_ and didn't all men know he meant, _Get ready_ TO EAT? Moreover, each sandwich felt he might dodge the bung-starters, but not the boss's right flipper!
The union was making ready to fight with the desperation of men whose retreat is cut on by a foe who never heard of The Hague Convention.
"Hey, no rough-house!" yelled the proprietor.
"Free lunch!" retorted Hendrik. Then he added, "_Quick!_"
The sandwich-men's nostrils began to dilate with the contagion of the battle spirit. One after another, these beasts of the gutter took off the boards and leaned them against the wall, out of the way, and eyed the boss expectantly, waiting for the word--_men once more!_ Hendrik, with the eye of a strategist and the look of a prize-fighter, planned the attack. Like a very wise man who lived to be the most popular of all our Presidents, he did his thinking aloud.