“Ver’ good boy,” said Manuel, slipping
out of his boots and disappearing into the black shadows
of the lower bunk. “Expec’ he make
good man, Danny. I no see he is any so mad as
your parpa he says. Eh, wha-at?”
Dan chuckled, but the chuckle ended in a snore.
It was thick weather outside, with a rising wind,
and the elder men stretched their watches. The
hour struck clear in the cabin; the nosing bows slapped
and scuffed with the seas; the foc’sle stove-pipe
hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it; and the
boys slept on, while Disko, Long Jack, Tom Platt,
and Uncle Salters, each in turn, stumped aft to look
at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor held,
or to veer out a little more cable against chafing,
with a glance at the dim anchor-light between each
round.
Harvey waked to find the “first half”
at breakfast, the foc’sle door drawn to a crack,
and every square inch of the schooner singing its
own tune. The black bulk of the cook balanced
behind the tiny galley over the glare of the stove,
and the pots and pans in the pierced wooden board
before it jarred and racketed to each plunge.
Up and up the foc’sle climbed, yearning and surging
and quivering, and then, with a clear, sickle-like
swoop, came down into the seas. He could hear
the flaring bows cut and squelch, and there was a
pause ere the divided waters came down on the deck
above, like a volley of buckshot. Followed the
woolly sound of the cable in the hawse-hole; and a
grunt and squeal of the windlass; a yaw, a punt, and
a kick, and the ‘We’re Here’ gathered
herself together to repeat the motions.
“Now, ashore,” he heard Long Jack saying,
“ye’ve chores, an’ ye must do thim
in any weather. Here we’re well clear of
the fleet, an’ we’ve no chores—an’
that’s a blessin’. Good night, all.”
He passed like a big snake from the table to his bunk,
and began to smoke. Tom Platt followed his example;
Uncle Salters, with Penn, fought his way up the ladder
to stand his watch, and the cook set for the “second
half.”
It came out of its bunks as the others had entered
theirs, with a shake and a yawn. It ate till
it could eat no more; and then Manuel filled his pipe
with some terrible tobacco, crotched himself between
the pawl-post and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up
on the table, and smiled tender and indolent smiles
at the smoke. Dan lay at length in his bunk,
wrestling with a gaudy, gilt-stopped accordion, whose
tunes went up and down with the pitching of the ‘We’re
Here’. The cook, his shoulders against the
locker where he kept the fried pies (Dan was fond
of fried pies), peeled potatoes, with one eye on the
stove in event of too much water finding its way down
the pipe; and the general smell and smother were past
all description.
Harvey considered affairs, wondered that he was not
deathly sick, and crawled into his bunk again, as
the softest and safest place, while Dan struck up,
“I don’t want to play in your yard,”
as accurately as the wild jerks allowed.
