Mr. Baker, lounging over the after-hatch, sniffed the humid night in the company of the second mate. -- ‘Those West India niggers run fine and large -- some of them.... Ough!....Don't they? A fine, big man that, Mr. Creighton. Feel him on a rope. Hey? Ough! I will take him into my watch, I think.’ The second mate, a fair gentlemanly young fellow, with a resolute face and a splended physique, observed quietly that it was just about what he expected. There could be felt in his tone some slight bitterness which Mr. Baker very kindly set himself to argue away. ‘Come, come, young man,’ he said, grunting between the words. ‘Come! Don't be too greedy. You had that big Finn in your watch all the voyage. I will do what's fair. You may have those two young Scandinavians and I....Ough!....I get the nigger, and will take that.... Ough! that cheeky costermonger chap in a black frock-coat. I'll make him....Ough!....make him toe the mark, or my.... Ough!....name isn't Baker. Ough! Ough! Ough!’He grunted thrice -- ferociously. He had that trick of grunting so between his words and at the end of sentences. It was a fine, effective grunt that went well with his menacing utterance, with his heavy, bull-necked frame, his jerky, rolling gait; with his big, seamed face, his steady eyes, and sardonic mouth. But its effect had been long discounted by the men. They liked him; Belfast, who was a favourite, and knew it --mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charley -- but with greater caution -- imitated his walk. Some of his sayings became established daily quotations in the forecastle. Popularity can go no farther! Besides, all hands were ready to admit that on a fitting occasion the mate could ‘jump down a fellow's throat in a reg'lar Western Ocean style.’Page 15
Now he was giving his last orders. ‘Ough!....
You, Knowles! Call all hands at four. I want....Ough!.... to heave short before the tug comes. Look out for the Captain. I am going to lay down in my clothes....Ough!....Call me when you see the boat coming. Ough!Ough!....
The old man is sure to have something to say when he comes aboard’he remarked to Creighton. ‘Well, good-night....Ough! A long day before us to-morrow..... Ough!....Better turn in now. Ough! Ough!’Upon the dark deck a band of light flashed, then a door slammed, and Mr. Baker was gone into his neat cabin. Young Creighton stood leaning over the rail, and looked dreamily into the night of the East.
And he saw in it a long country lane, a lane of waving leaves and dancing sunshine. He saw stirring boughs of old trees outspread, and framing in their arch the tender, the caressing blueness of an English sky. And through the arch a girl in a clear dress, smiling under a sunshade, seemed to be stepping out of the tender sky.
At the other end of the ship the forecastle, with only one lamp burning now, was going to sleep in a dim emptiness traversed by loud breathings, by sudden short sighs. The double row of berths yawned black, like graves tenanted by uneasy corpses. Here and there a curtain of gaudy chintz, half drawn, marked the resting-place of a sybarite. Aleg hung over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight out with a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two light snores, that did not synchronise quarreled in funny dialogue. Singleton stripped again -- the old man suffered much from prickly heat -- stood cooling his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on his bare and adorned chest.
His head touched the beam of the deck above. The nigger, half undressed, was busy casting adrift the lashing of his box, and spreading his bedding in an upper berth. He moved about in his socks, tall and noiseless, with a pair of braces beating about his heels. Amongst the shadows of stanchions and bowsprit, Donkin munched a piece of hard ship's bread, sitting on the deck with upturned feet and restless eyes; he held the biscuit up before his mouth in the whole fist, and snapped his jaws at it with a raging face.
Crumbs fell between his outspread legs. Then he got up.
‘Where's our water-cask?’ he asked in a contained voice.
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Singleton, without a word, pointed with a big hand that held a short smouldering pipe. Donkin bent over the cask, drank out of The tin, splashing the water, turned round and noticed the nigger looking at him over the shoulder with calm loftiness. He moved up sideways.
‘There's a blooming supper for a man,’he whispered bitterly. ‘My dorg at 'ome wouldn't 'ave it. It's fit enouf for you an' me. 'Ere's a big ship's fo'c'sle.... Not a bloomin'
scrap of meat in the kids I've looked in all the lockers.....
The nigger stared like a man addressed unexpectedly in a foreign language. Donkin changed his tone: -- ‘Giv'us a bit of 'baccy, mate’ he breathed out confidentially, ‘I'aven't 'ad a smoke or chew for the last month. I am rampin' mad for it.
Come on, old man'!’
‘Don't be familiar,’ said the nigger.
Donkin started and sat down on a chest near by, out of sheer surprise.
‘We haven't kept pigs together.’ continued James Wait in a deep undertone. ‘Here's your tobacco.’ Then, after a pause, he asked: -- ‘What ship?’ -- ‘ Golden State, ’muttered Donkin indistinctly, biting the tobacco.
The nigger whistled low. -- ‘Ran?’ he said curtly.
