Complete Works

in the downstairs kitchen. The words dying faintly on their lips, ended in light sighs. A sudden voice cried into the cold night, “O Lord!” No one changed his position or took any notice of the cry. One or two passed, with a repeated and vague gesture, their hand over their faces, but most of them kept very still. In the benumbed immobility of their bodies they were excessively wearied by their thoughts, which rushed with the rapidity and vividness of dreams. Now and then, by an abrupt and startling exclamation, they answered the weird hail of some illusion; then, again, in silence contemplated the vision of known faces and familiar things. They recalled the aspect of forgotten shipmates and heard the voice of dead and gone skippers. They remembered the noise of gaslit streets, the steamy heat of tap-rooms or the scorching sunshine of calm days at sea.
    Mr. Baker left his insecure place, and crawled, with stoppages, along the poop. In the dark and on all fours he resembled some carnivorous animal prowling amongst corpses. At the break, propped to windward of a stanchion, he looked down on the main deck. It seemed to him that the ship had a tendency to stand up a little more. The wind had eased a little, he thought, but the sea ran as high as ever. The waves foamed viciously, and the lee side of the deck disappeared under a hissing whiteness as of boiling milk, while the rigging sang steadily with a deep vibrating note, and, at every upward swing of the ship, the wind rushed with a long-drawn clamour amongst the spars. Mr. Baker watched very still. A man near him began to make a blabbing noise with his lips, all at once and very loud, as though the cold had broken brutally through him. He went on: — ”Ba — ba — ba — brrr — brr — ba — ba.” — ”Stop that!” cried Mr. Baker, groping in the dark. “Stop it!” He went on shaking the leg he found under his hand. — ”What is it, sir?” called out Belfast, in the tone of a man awakened suddenly; “we are looking after that ‘ere Jimmy.” — ”Are you? Ough! Don’t make that row then. Who’s that near you?” — ”It’s me — the boatswain, sir,” growled the West-country man; “we are trying to keep life in that poor devil.” — ”Aye, aye!” said Mr. Baker. “Do it quietly, can’t you?” — ”He wants us to hold him up above the rail,” went on the boatswain, with irritation, “says he can’t breathe here under our jackets.” — ”If we lift ‘im, we drop ‘im overboard,” said another voice, “we can’t feel our hands with cold.” — ”I don’t care. I am choking!” exclaimed James Wait in a clear tone. — ”Oh, no, my son,” said the boatswain, desperately, “you don’t go till we all go on this fine night.” — ”You will see yet many a worse,” said Mr. Baker, cheerfully. — ”It’s no child’s play, sir!” answered the boatswain. “Some of us further aft, here, are in a pretty bad way.” — ”If the blamed sticks had been cut out of her she would be running along on her bottom now like any decent ship, an’ giv’ us all a chance,” said some one, with a sigh. — ”The old man wouldn’t have it... much he cares for us,” whispered another. — ”Care for you!” exclaimed Mr. Baker, angrily. “Why should he care for you? Are you a lot of women passengers to be taken care of? We are here to take care of the ship — and some of you ain’t up to that. Ough!... What have you done so very smart to be taken care of? Ough!... Some of you can’t stand a bit of a breeze without crying over it.” — ”Come, sorr. We ain’t so bad,” protested Belfast, in a voice shaken by shivers; “we ain’t... brr...” — ”Again,” shouted the mate, grabbing at the shadowy form; “again!... Why, you’re in your shirt! What have you done?” — ”I’ve put my oilskin and jacket over that half-dead nayggur — and he says he chokes,” said Belfast, complainingly. — ”You wouldn’t call me nigger if I wasn’t half dead, you Irish beggar!” boomed James Wait, vigorously. — ”You... brrr... You wouldn’t be white if you were ever so well... I will fight you... brrrr... in fine weather... brrr ... with one hand tied behind my back... brrrrrr...” — ”I don’t want your rags — I want air,” gasped out the other faintly, as if suddenly exhausted.
    The sprays swept over whistling and pattering. Men disturbed in their peaceful torpor by the pain of quarrelsome shouts,