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The sailors were sluicing the deck with great hoses, and sprinkling it with little watering-cans of disinfectant. Up on the fo'c'sle her deck-chair was side by side with another on which "L. F." was stencilled; after breakfast she went there with a book, expecting Louis to follow her.
His trick was nearly up, and when he was relieved he went forward; pausing at the fo'c'sle head to light a pipe he fell in talk with some of the hands, leaning with his back against the bulwarks and blown upon by the spill of the wind from the head sails. An old shell-back by name of Ponting was holding the floor. "We're comin' up to Kerguelen," he was saying. "Should think I did know it.
When the whole lot were in the fo'c'sle Raft gave them time to settle, then he went down amongst them revolver in pocket. They had lit a lamp, some had lit opium pipes and some were lighting them, and they lay about like creatures broken with cold and weariness. He nodded to them and left them to the opium that would drive the chill from their bones, then coming on deck stood beside the girl.
You're mighty shaky on your feet, considering the festivities that we're bound for. Step it out, my boy, or I'll have to carry ye." "Are ye coming to the fo'c'sle?" said I, being well aware that this was equivalent to a drawing-room visitor taking tea in the kitchen. "You know it's where the common sailors, and Alister and I have our meals?" I added, for his private ear. "Thank ye for the hint.
Like a bally collar in a laundry! Oh, damn life! What's he know about it, anyway? Have you got a deck-chair?" "Yes, but " "I'm going to put mine on the fo'c'sle presently. If we don't peg out claims they'll all go, and the fo'c'sle is the best place in the steerage. Where's yours? I'll t-take it there, if you like." He had begun to stammer in the last sentence, suddenly self-conscious again.
"There's your boat," said Bontemps, "built by Pinoli of Genoa for an American. She has even a bath-room a main cabin with two cabins off it, your man could berth in the fo'c'sle which is big enough for twenty like him. Follow me." He led the way on to the deck of the yawl. The girl went over it down below into the main cabin with two little sleeping cabins off it.
"It was in a terrible temper," ses Joe, "and its face was awful to look at. 'Tell the watchman, it ses, 'that if he don't give you the watch and chain I shall appear to 'im agin and kill 'im." "All right," I ses, looking behind me to where three of the 'ands of the Daisy was sitting on the fo'c'sle smoking. "I've got plenty of company to-night." "Company won't save you," ses Joe.
He was rousted out by the voice of the Bo'sw'n calling for all hands on deck and slipping into his oilskins he came up, receiving a smack of sea in his face as he emerged from the fo'c'sle hatch. The wind had shifted and a black squall coming up from astern had hit the ship.
"Don't say that name, Daddy!" interrupted the child. "You know I don't like it. Say 'Captain January'!" "I tell ye, Honeysuckle," said the old man, "I felt more like a sea-cook than a cap'n that night. A cap'n on a quarter-deck's a good thing; but a cap'n on a p'int o' rock, out to sea in a northeast gale, might just as well be a fo'c'sle hand and done with it.
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