Well, in the floor of the port foc’sle, wherein I was sitting, was the hatch to the forepeak, below.  It was this yard square trap-door which caused my agitation.  My glance fell casually upon it, and I saw it move!  It lifted a hair’s breadth, and I heard a slight scraping sound below.

Aye, I was startled!  A rat?  But I knew that even a ship rat did not grow large enough to move a trap-door.  The ghost of some dead sailor-man, haunting the scene of his earthly misery?  Well, I had the superstitions of a foc’sle Jack, but I knew well enough that a proper ghost would not walk abroad in the noon o’ day.  I stared fascinated at that moving piece of wood.  It slowly lifted about an inch, and then, through the narrow slit; I saw an eye regarding me with a fixed glare.  I glared back, my amazement struggling with the conviction that was oversweeping me; and then, just as I was about to speak, Bucko Lynch’s voice came booming into my retreat.

“Hey, you!  D’you reckon to spell-o the whole afternoon?  If you’ve finished your scouse, out on deck with you—­and lively about it!”

There was no denying that request, eye or no eye.  And at the second mate’s first word, the trap door dropped shut, I clattered out of the foc’sle, and to work; but I was turning that little matter of the forepeak hatch over in my mind, you bet!

It was near dusk, well on in the first dog-watch, when the mates let up with their driving, and herded all hands aft to the main deck.  The forepeak hatch had rested heavily upon my mind all afternoon, and I was tingling with excitement when I went aft with the rest to face the ceremony which always concludes the first day out, the choosing and setting of the watches, and the calling of the muster roll.  Something unexpected was about to happen, I felt sure.

We were a sorry looking crowd gathered there on the main deck, before the cabin, a tatterdemalion mob, with bruised bodies and sullen faces, and with hate and fright in our glowering eyes.  Those few of us who were seamen possessed a bitter knowledge of the cruel months ahead, the rest, the majority, faced a fate all the more dreadful for being dimly perceived, and of which they had received a fierce foretaste that merciless day.

Captain Swope came to the break of the poop, lounged over the rail, and looked us over.  In his hand he held the ship’s articles.  He regarded us with a sort of wicked satisfaction, seeming to draw delight from the sight of our huddled, miserable forms.  Without saying a word, he gloated over us, over the puffed face of the Cockney, over the expression of desperate horror in the face of the red-shirted man, over the abject figure of the little squarehead, who had been going about all afternoon sobbing, with his hand pressed to his side, and whose face was even now twisted with a pain to which he feared to give voice.  Aye, Swope stared down at us, licking his chops, so to speak, at the sight of our suffering; and we glared back at him, hating and afraid.