A few of the pickpocket-faced ones hung back during the gale that
morning, crawled into corners, effacing themselves, like sick cats. At
the afternoon feeding and watering (despite the words of contempt,
glances of contempt, and, worst of all, silences of contempt, bestowed
upon them when they showed face at their own feeding-time) several did
not turn out, pretended to do so--perhaps tried to do so--but slunk
back to the cabin. When Rafferty, missing them, came aft to hunt them
forth, they showed their peeked faces to him, worn and scared; and he
despised them and left them, turned back to his working majority again
and shouted through the shouting of the storm overhead, and the rushing
of the draught along his deck: "There's some chickens, some chickens!"
His men knew to whom he referred, looked at him--and sneered, and
laughed, and tossed their heads in agreement; Jack even, whose attitude
to Rafferty so far had been one of watchfulness, gave a kind of loud
mutter of: "We don't want them with us, messing about here." Cockney
too, energetic straw-boss, looked on them as did Rafferty.
"Let 'em lie there and shiver, then," he said.
Only two of the main deck men were perturbed beyond labour by the
steadily increasing violence of the gale, scared by the consideration
that it had begun to blow last night, and had been getting worse and
worse ever since.
"Two men short!" commented Candlass in the afternoon, and went aft to
the cabin to look for them, found one on the way, behind a bale of hay,
peered at him as if wondering what he was doing there, balancing
carefully with loose knees, taking hand from pocket only to grab and
hang on by a protruding end of barricade. He eyed him as a man may eye
a newly-bought puppy that has gone in between the sofa's end and the
wall. The youth got up, scrambled out as best he could, hauled himself
to his feet. Candlass spoke never a word, but bowed to him in the
attitude of one listening for a whisper, mock-commiserating, and the
youth dragged himself forward to find that his fellows did not want
him, had fallen to work passing the hay themselves, and were inclined
to treat him as if he was in the way. He had the air as of pleading to
be allowed to do something. Candlass, meanwhile, walked on into the
cabin, zig-zagged across, looking for his other missing man.
There were two of the lower deck hobbledehoys there. He waggled a
thumb at the door, and they got up and crawled out, but he did not
follow them; he went up on deck instead, to hunt out the man who was
missing from his own deck in particular. The sheep sniffled and
bleated occasionally under securely-lashed dodgers that now covered the
tops of all the pens. They saw his feet and thrust out their black
faces, wrinkled their noses, shivered and withdrew. It was near their
feed time. (Mike and Cockney, with two or three others, saw to them
daily on their way back, after having tended the cattle.) Candlass
tilted his body along, looking left and right to see where his man
might be hiding, the ship ever and again pausing in the midst of a
rise, pausing much as men on deck did at a more violent and unexpected
roll and kick. Some greater wave, at such times, had caught her fair,
and smashing upon her hull as on a cliff, raced whirling along the
length of her, shot up her side, soared thinly there beyond the
bulwark, to be immediately blown wide, as is the top of a fountain in
the wind, scudding and rattling along the decks. Tarpaulins had been
rigged entirely across her, below the bridge, to protect the sheep on
the after deck; and as far as to that barrier did Candlass now strut,
tilting and balancing. And there, in a space between two sheep-pens,
beside a ventilator, he saw a pair of boot-soles, bent down and grabbed
at the legs beyond them, and the face of the missing man looked up at
him--green. It was sea-sickness. Candlass stooped low.
"Sick?" he said.
The man's eyes rolled. He clung desperately to the ventilator.
"Don't fall overboard, don't want to lose a man. Savvey?"
The man tried to nod; his whole body sagged forward in that effort.
"You lie on your back when you ain't actually being sick," Candlass
roared into his ear. "Savvey?"
Again the man tried to nod and at least succeeded in making his head go
up and down instead of being powerless to keep it from doing aught but
rolling left and right.
"Don't fall overboard," Candlass counselled again, and lurched away,
muttering to himself: "Sick all right."
But most of the men enjoyed the gale. It was something doing. And
when, next morning, the pickpocket-faced youth sat up ready to give his
shout of: "Call me in another hour, Rafferty, and bring me me shaving
water," his voice failed. He looked round the cabin; he had been one
of the shirkers yesterday.
"That's right," said one of the men. "You keep your mouth shut this
morning!" And the gunsel and his special cronies kept quiet, for it
was unfitting that those who skulked in a corner during a gale should
cheek Rafferty the morning after merely because they found that the
swing and sweep of the tossing stern were back a little more to the
normal. The gale had indeed blown itself out, or nearly so. It was a
tremendous morning in the North Atlantic. A fountain of gold,
preceding sunrise, shot up eastwards. A sound of hissing and of
breaking foam was round the ship, and echoed in every corner. The
waves soared, great and curving, blue and purple, veined like marble in
their forward curves with the foam of other broken waves, soared
higher, curled their tops, broke, and as they broke the wind took the
foam and whirled it broadcast. There was a wonderful purple and blue
and windy hilarity over that great expanse, so high a sea running that
even the horizon line was ragged.
The grub that day seemed painfully scanty. The uneaten shares of the
one or two seasick men made no difference, so great were the appetites
of the fit. Cockney admitted, after the meal was over, that he
sympathised with those persons who chummed with, or intimidated, Pierre
and Four Eyes, for the sake of what food they might smuggle away from
the galley--though his phrasing of this comprehension was of course all
his own.
"Are they cadgin' off Frenchy and that object in the coat?" asked Mike.
"'Aven't you seen 'em?" said Cockney. "'O, Frenchy, bring hus along
some pie!'" he cried out in a fleering voice.
"I quite belave it," said Mike. "I see some of 'em cadgin' tobacco.
There's men aboard this ship I know I wouldn't prisint me plug of
tobacco to. If they took a bite out of it you'd be thinkin' the plug
was in their mouth, and the chaw they axed for was the piece they gave
back to ye." There was an attempt at a laugh, an obvious attempt, for
the shot had gone home. "'Have ye got a piece of chewing on ye?'"
mocked Mike. "'Me pipe's empty, have you a fill about ye?'--'Have ye a
ceegareet about ye?'" He paused. "'After you wid the ceegareet!'" he
mocked.
And he lived up to his opinion. There are people who arrange their
moral code according to what they can do and cannot do. There are
people to whom a fall from fealty to their code is occasion for
renouncing and deriding that code. Mike was not of these. He disliked
cadging, but had his love of a smoke or a chew driven him to cadge he
would not have relinquished his opinion; he would have smoked and
chewed as a defeated man.
All day now there was sign of better weather. Even the wind aided to
calm the seas, swinging round a point or two and besoming the
wave-tops, flattening them. There was hash and pea-soup that day--the
pea-soup drunk in the tin mugs, of course, along with, or after, the
hash--and the "Push" were glad of it. It was a great tonic day. By
night all the clouds seemed to have been blown away; stars by the
billion filled the vault; the Milky Way was like a whirl of triumph,
like a gesture of joy across the heavens. The wake of the tiny little
_Glory_ (she seemed tiny now) was as an imitation of that Milky Way,
full of balls, large and small, and smaller, down to the size of sparks
even, of phosphorus--dancing and bursting and thinning out. Mike,
coming on deck a trifle disgusted by a surfeit of what he called
"soup-kitchen palaver" that was in progress amid a group of "youse,"
looked down at that wake, moody, and furrowed, that kind of half-broken
look upon his face, like a wondering beast, a puzzled beast. He stood
there at the stern, lifted high and brought low, till his back went
cold.
"Bejabbers, it's all very strange," he said to himself; and being cold
he looked round for shelter. Some wisps of hay, blown from windward,
had been brought up against the lee rail, and he gathered them
together. The sheep bleated.
"I'm using this for me own comfort," he said, addressing the sheep in
the end cote; "go to sleep!" And he squatted down with his back
against the cotes, and stretched out his legs--sat there a long time
while the ship pulsed and pulsed on, tossing her stern and the engines
racing and steadied, racing and steadied, as she slid through the sea,
churning the water into foam, in which whirls of gold began like
nebulas of stars, whirled into complete little globes, danced away as
entrancing as opals, and then suddenly went out.
Now it happened that, below, Scholar felt he might almost suffocate,
and remembering that he had been some time out of the weather, for
which he had always a great friendliness, never liking to be too long
out of touch with it--blow high, blow low, rain, mist or sunshine--he
too came on deck. The poop companion-way had been closed these last
few days, and that made the cabin all the more asphyxiating. He came
up that narrow staircase, feet clattering on the worn brass edges,
turned the handle; eddies of wind did the rest. He wrestled a spell
with the door, then came on deck, closed the door, and looked up in awe
at all these stars--stood there balancing, now drawn away from them
down and down, next moment soaring and swinging up with a sensation as
if he might be swung on and come up through that golden dust and see
some explanation. Then down he was borne again, or felt as though his
body was borne down and his spirit left up there. Explanation, or no
explanation, it was good--all good, the crying of the sea, the whistle
and shriek of the wind in the cordage, the feel of the wind, the scud
of the spray--good!
He turned and looked forward. There seemed to be not a soul on deck.
It was as if he had dropped from a star, forgetting all about it on the
way, and had alighted gently upon this thing that, reeking
volcano-like, tossed and swung, but always forward through the night.
He had almost to take it on faith that there was a man in that
hardly-discernible little barrel on the foremast, the summit of which
raked from left to right. He peered up at the bridge. Yes, something
moved there from port to starboard and back again, like a mouse running
to and fro on a shelf. Below his feet the ceaseless whirl and whirl
went on. A man suddenly appeared, jumping up on top of the sheep pens,
tapping with his toe before him, then stepping, to be sure he stood on
firm board top and not on tarpaulin cover, turned the top of a
ventilator, disappeared, bobbed up again, revealed against the starry
sky, or at any rate revealed from his head down to about his knees, the
wind pluck-pluck-plucking at his short jacket. He disappeared again,
jumping down and was gone. Scholar moved to one side, kicked something
soft, looked down and said: "Oh, I beg your pardon!" and a coarse Irish
voice answered: "All right, Scholar."
There was fresh movement at Scholar's feet.
"I seen ye against the stars, but ye couldn't see me. Bring yourself
to an anchor here beside me--I have some straw here--and give us your
crack."
Scholar, peering down, was now able to make out where Mike reclined,
and sat down beside him, back against the end of the last sheep-pen.
But they did not speak at once. Scholar felt in his pocket for pipe
and tobacco, and held the tobacco-bag to Mike.
"Have a fill?" he said.
Mike put forth a hand, and drew it back.
"No," he growled.
"I've a plug of chewing-tobacco somewhere," said Scholar. "Yes--here
it is."
Out went Mike's hand, then abruptly back again; and this time he thrust
both hands deep in pockets.
"No, thank you, Scholar."
Scholar wondered if he had given some offence. Ignorant of how to
repel in this society in which he found himself, he might also, even in
sitting down in response to Mike's invitation, ignorantly have
transgressed some usage of courtesy in this sphere. Next moment Mike
explained.
"When I see the way the fellers on this ship go cadgin' for tobacco it
gives me a pain." He shifted his position slightly, as if he really
felt a physical pain. "I would think shame to keep on axing a man day
after day--_many_ times a day--'Have you got any chewing? Have you got
any smoking?'"
"That's all right," said Scholar. "You didn't ask me--I offered to
you."
"Yes, yes, I know; but I said to meself: 'Thim fellers has no daycency.
I'll do without chewings and smokings until I get to Liverpool.' No,
Scholar, thank you kindly--I'll go wanting it. It has too much hold
upon me as it is."
Scholar did not press.