"I shall keep as close to you as I can, sir," said the sailor. "You
won't want any telling which way to go, for there is only one way for
you to get along, as you'll soon find out."
I started, and soon felt that I must be past where the two men had found
it so tight a fit, though I had had no difficulty in getting along
whatever, and gaining courage from the excitement, I crawled forward
over the tops of rough packing-cases and between others, finding the
passage uneven, and with a different level every minute. Now there
would be plenty of room; but a foot or two farther I had to crawl over a
case that came so close to a beam arching over from side to side of the
ship that I began wondering how my companion had passed in, and as soon
as I was through and into the wider space beyond, I stopped with my head
turned back to speak.
"You can't get through there, can you?" I asked.
"Well, it is pretty tight, sir, but I did it afore, and I've got to do
it again."
I listened to his efforts, and could make out that he was getting
through inch by inch, and he kept on commenting upon his progress the
while.
"Good job as one's bones give a bit, sir," he was saying, when the
knocking ahead came clearly, and seemed not so very far away. "Give 'em
an answer, sir; not too loud. Do it with your knuckles on something."
I was upon a case as he spoke, and I answered at once; but to my
annoyance this only drew forth fresh knockings in various ways--two
knocks together, then two more very quickly--a regular rat-rat--and then
all kinds of variations, to which I replied as well as I could, and then
left off in a pet.
"Who's going to keep on doing that?" I cried angrily. "They must
wait."
"Yes," growled Barney; "I'd go on, sir. That arn't doing nobody no
good."
The consequence was that I went forward slowly, with an accompaniment of
taps, which kept irritating me in that hot, stifling passage--no, it is
not fair to call such a place a passage, seeing that it was merely an
opening formed by the settling down of the packages, or their opening
out from the rolling of the ship in the storm.
I was passing along one of these latter portions with great care when a
cold chill ran through me, for the thought came--suppose the ship heels
over now, I shall be nipped in here and crushed to death.
But the ship did not heel over; though I did not feel comfortable till I
was out of the opening, and flat once more on the top of a huge crate,
between whose openings, the sharp ends of the straw used in packing it
projected and scratched my face. Here I paused to listen to Barney
panting and grunting as he struggled along.
"Mustn't make quite so much noise, sir," he whispered; "or some 'un
uppards 'll be hearing of us."
He was more careful, and I once more went crawling laboriously, and
finding on the whole so little room that I began to think I must have
gone much farther than Barney had been before. And there was a strange
thing connected with that creep over and amongst the cargo. Time seemed
to be indefinitely prolonged. I could fancy one moment that I had been
crawling and crawling for hours, and going a tremendous distance, while
the next my idea was that I had hardly moved and not been there a
minute. Every now and then, in spite of setting my teeth hard, and even
biting my tongue, that horrible feeling of fright came back; and I have
often asked myself since whether I was an awful coward. But I never
could give a fair judgment, for I have thought that most people would
have felt the same, whether they were lads or grown men, and certainly
my three companions in talking it over said it upset them more than
going in for a real fight.
It was curious, too, how busy one's brain was when I could keep from
thinking of being smothered or crushed, or so fixed in that I could not
get out. For then I began to think about moles burrowing underground,
and worms in their holes, and rabbits and mice; and on one of these
occasions I started and wondered at the peculiarity of the coincidence,
for I suddenly became aware of a peculiar, half-musky smell, and then
there was a scuffling, squealing sound which sent a shudder through me.
"Hear the rats, sir?" whispered Barney; but I was so upset that I
couldn't reply.