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It had occurred to him that since even Tom Mowbray could only get men for the Etna by drugging them, her officers would probably take special precautions to guard against desertion. "Do they lock us in here at night?" he asked of the three of them when they sat at supper in the port fo'c'sle. They stared at him uncomprehendingly.
It was this that made him protest, at the commencement of our acquaintance, against being called Yonson. And upon this, and him, Louis passed judgment and prophecy. "'Tis a fine chap, that squarehead Johnson we've for'ard with us," he said. "The best sailorman in the fo'c'sle. He's my boat- puller. But it's to trouble he'll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward. It's meself that knows.
The Malahini had begun shoving her bow and fo'c'sle head under the bigger ones, and at times her waist was filled rail-high with water. "Now's the time for your engine!" Grief bellowed; and Captain Warfield, crawling over to where the engineer lay, shouted emphatic commands. Under the engine, going full speed ahead, the Malahini behaved better.
No, it was a rock. 'Starboard! I yells to the felly at the wheel. 'Starboard! Hard up! Well, the skipper was below, an' the second mate, who had the deck, was mixin' paint under the fo'c'sle; so the wheel went up an' the old wagon payed off 'fore the wind.
Fo'c'sle hands on a Mardukan ship belonged definitely to the lower orders. "There's still too much free land and free opportunity on the Sword-Worlds," Trask explained. "Nobody does much bowing and scraping to the class above him; he's too busy trying to shove himself up into it. And the men who ship out as Space Vikings are the least class-conscious of the lot.
"Well, sir, who was the first man?" cried the captain. "Beg pardon, your honour," said Joe Dance, gruffly; "it was down in the fo'c'sle." "I know that, sir, but I want to know the names." A faint sound arose as if several men had drawn a deep breath. "Do you hear me, Dance?" cried the captain. "Oh yes, your honour."
Raft got into the boat and rowed off for the beach bringing them aboard four at a time and as each lot reached the deck they kow-towed to the girl and then trotted forward to the fo'c'sle, disappearing like rats, their teeth chattering from exposure during the night, stripped to the waist as they were, and never could one have imagined these little cringing harmless looking men the jackals of the day before.
A little later smoke issued from the tiny cowl over the fo'c'sle and rolled in a little pungent cloud to the Kentish shore. Then a delicious odour of frying steak rose from below, and fell like healing balm upon the susceptible nostrils of the skipper as he stood at the helm. "Is Mrs. Bunker getting up?" inquired the mate, as he emerged from the fo'c'sle and walked aft.
He finished his patch and turned in. Raft finished his pipe and turned in also and the fo'c'sle was given over to the noises of the sea and the straining timbers of the ship. Now that the figures of the two sailors had vanished its personality took fuller life, grim, dark, close, like the interior of a grimy hand clutching the lives of all those sleepers.
The difficulty is to keep her from overfamiliar intercourse with them, for though she signed on as cook's mate, she eats in the cabin with the officers, and between the cabin and the fo'c'sle lies a great gulf. They come and tell her about their wives and their girls and what rotten food they've got 'Everybody has got rotten food on board ship, you silly ass! quoth Liosha.
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