The roustabout had been listening to a conversation the previous evening between Captain Rowlands, Mr. Brice, an English army officer, and myself about bubonic plague and had remembered everything he heard.
Since the traffic is heavy, it is necessary for the traveler to board the steamer the day before to obtain a convenient place to sling his hammock and then hire some roustabout to watch it for him.
One of the passengers on board I found to be Angel Larrain, the efficient but villainous looking bearded roustabout whom Prat and I had delegated to bring our baggage to Lima upon consideration of his passage.
This for the feet, or the head, of the first roustabout that shows himself!
Yes; he was just an ordinary roustabout chap," grunted Hepton, disgustedly.
Another drunken reprobate had beaten up the roustabout in a saloon—and got thirty days for assault and battery.
I served my time working as a roustabout on oil wells in one of the Naval Reserves.
By this time the roustabout was thawed out by our fire, and we had supper.
Just as our meal was ready, our roustabout came into camp, riding one of the horses barebacked, with only a halter and leading the other two.
The life of the roustabout varied some with the habits of the roustabout and the disposition of the mate.
Shouting, the roustabout tore across the clearing and just escaped the rush of the vicious brute by nimbly climbing the projecting logs at the cook-house corners.
Yelling with pain, the roustabout swore, begged, pleaded piteously to be let alone.
As Michigan swung his whip the roustabout sent forth scream on scream.
He chattered much more theroustabout could not remember, and the boy said very little, but presently offered him a shilling to mind the horse, saying he would be gone not more than half an hour.
The matter was that the roustabout was crying softly like a baby.
The roustabout held with his other hand a canvas bag on his head so that it concealed nearly his entire face.
Bart had purchased the articles the roustabout had required, and that evening Baker came out from his hiding-place marvelously unlike the great-bearded, shock-headed individual Bart had previously known.
Bart told his mother something about the roustabout and their friendly relations, and the bottle of hot coffee, home-made biscuit sandwiches, and half a pie were put up for Bart's pensioner with willing and grateful care.
He had come in contact with the roustabout now, who with all his timidity was proving himself a hero in the present instance.
Bart was about to shout to his father in front, or to his roustabout friend, whom he expected must be somewhere near by this time, when his captive gave a jerk, tore one arm free, and whirled the other aloft.
Don't try to," advised the roustabout in a dreary way.
The roustabout with a nervous gasp vanished in the darkness.
This roustabout crew had all the unloading to do, and the reason I liked it was it gave us some chance to steal.
Before we had been there long, one day there was a call among the prisoners for volunteers to form a roustabout crew.
These would indeed guarantee leaving a straight wake; but under such conditions a roustabout might accomplish this.
I possessed such a growth of beard and was altogether so disreputable looking as to be mistaken for a roustabout by the boat's officers, who set me at work to earn my passage.
The overseer gave me a hat which added little to my personal appearance, and by the time we were called to knock off for the noon meal, I was thoroughly tired, and disgusted, feeling as much a roustabout as I certainly looked.
The roustabout wrapped both arms around the legs of the Martian and yanked hard.
The roustabout shook his fist at the native crouched under the car.
I came here because I'm a roustabout who is supposed to be able to do anything, which is what I'm getting paid for.
Out here, you only forget once," the roustabout said, releasing her.
The roustabout woke with a shudder, flinching under Rainey's hand.
Lund reached down and jerked theroustabout to his feet, half strangling him with his grip on the collar of the lad's shirt, and flung him into a chair.
That drunkenroustabout hasn't one chance in a thousand to live, anyway, and the country would be better off without his brand.
He is a Negro roustabout and was sitting in the bar room at Poydras and Franklin Streets when a mob passed along and espied him.
He was employed at different times in a sawmill, on the street gangs, as a roustabout on the levee, as a helper at the sugar works and as a coal shoveler in the engine room of the St. Charles Hotel.
At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustaboutto task.
Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a roustabout instead.
Peter called to theroustabout and asked about Tump Pack.
A roustabout whom every one called the Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
But the hasty plunge into the underdepth of roustabout life was like the brine bath of the blacksmith to heated steel; it served to temper him afresh.
He had been told that the life of a roustabout on the Western rivers was the most dismal of all the gropings in the social underworld, and he was the more eager to endure its hardships as a participant.
Inured to hard living as he was, the substitute roustabout had made no more than a half-dozen rounds between the levee and the cargo-deck of the Belle Julie before he was glad to note that the steamer's lading was all but completed.
If that's why he's framed this thenRoustabout Key is no place for you.
When Milo came back home without you he told me you had decided to stay on at Roustabout Key to help Roke, till the new foreman could come from Homestead.
By the way, do you remember that conch, Davy, over at Roustabout Key?
I want to tell you just what happened to me today from the time I set foot onRoustabout Key.
The roustabout apparently belonged to the conch tribe of which Milo had spoken.
He recalled the musical afternoon at Roustabout Key which his presence had interrupted, and Roke's fanatical devotion to Hade.
I am running across to Roustabout Key this afternoon.
There's Roustabout Key just ahead," he finished as their launch rounded an outcrop of rock and came in view of a mile-long wooded island a bare thousand yards off the weather bow.
He saw more than one killing in those days when he was roustabout for me.
Following the clue obtained from the woman who had worked in the elder Weir's household, he visited the old Mexican named as having been used as roustabout by Vorse in early days.
If this formerroustabout of the saloon knew anything!
Peel off those roustabout garments," he said to me.
Otherwise, I judged myself slated to enact the role of roustabout at the pleasure of the rude gentleman in command.
The roustabout dived, as the roustabouts always do, after the drowning, even at the risk of their good-for-nothing lives.
And the roustabout throwing the rope from the perilous end of the dangling gang-plank!
We had all stopped short, and the roustabout who was towing the lifter came hurrying up.
The roustabout who had been following us with the lifter had stopped to chat with a couple of his fellows.
