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Knowles declared he could already smell home from there, and with a heavy list on his short leg laughed fit to split his sides. A group of grizzled sea-dogs looked out for a time in silence and with grim absorbed faces. One said suddenly "'Tain't far to London now." "My first night ashore, blamme if I haven't steak and onions for supper... and a pint of bitter," said another.
Some one cried at him: "What's your name?" "Donkin," he said, looking round with cheerful effrontery. "What are you?" asked another voice. "Why, a sailor like you, old man," he replied, in a tone that meant to be hearty but was impudent. "Blamme if you don't look a blamed sight worse than a broken-down fireman," was the comment in a convinced mutter.
One or two stretched on the wet deck, slept with heads pillowed on their bent arms, and several, sitting on the hatch, smoked. Their weary faces appeared through a thin blue haze, pacified and with sparkling eyes. The boatswain put his head through the door. "Relieve the wheel, one of you" he shouted inside "it's six. Blamme if that old Singleton hasn't been there more'n thirty hours.
He laughed in a mocking splutter and said: "Ten days. Strike me blind if ever!... You will be dead by this time to-morrow p'r'aps. Ten days!" He waited for a while. "D'ye 'ear me? Blamme if yer don't look dead already." Wait must have been collecting his strength, for he said almost aloud "You're a stinking, cadging liar. Every one knows you."
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