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Updated: June 11, 2025
Of social distinction, beyond the division of afterguard from fo'c'sle, he seemed to possess little idea, save for a vague echo, caught from the man Harbutt, about the Rich People; and as to sex, beyond a queer instinctive delicacy and a tenderness due to her weakness and the memory of how he had found her, she might just as well have been a man, or a child like himself.
Cabin-boy at twelve, ship's boy at fourteen, ordinary seamen at sixteen, able seaman at seventeen, and cock of the fo'c'sle, infinite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving neither help nor sympathy, I did it all for myself navigation, mathematics, science, literature, and what not. And of what use has it been?
"He's deader'n the bolt on the fo'c'sle door, Oh, we says so, an' we hopes so; Oh, he'll never knock us flat no more, Oh, poor ol' man!" Under the impetus of this dirge with its innumerable verses the men rolled the boulders down. The fortification began to take form and give promise of shelter in time of need. And there was no telling how soon that time might come!
Later I took her home. When she got there she was rather ashamed and hid her face in the sofa all the time half laughing. New Year's Eve. A mild type of influenza is going the round, caught no doubt on a whaler. In the fo'c'sle of one a man was seen wrapped up in a blanket who was perhaps suffering from it. I can imagine as I sit here the bells at home ringing out the old year.
I raxed me a meal fra galley-shelves an' pantries an' lazareetes an' cubby-holes that I would not ha' gied to the mate of a Cardiff collier; an' ye ken we say a Cardiff mate will eat clinkers to save waste. I'm sayin' it was simply vile! The crew had written what they thought of it on the new paint o' the fo'c'sle, but I had not a decent soul wi' me to complain on.
In admirable contrast stood the Chinese cook, easy, dignified, set apart by spotless raiment, the hidalgo of the seas. I dare say you never had occasion to assist at the farce which followed. A long and wordy paper of precautions, a fo'c'sle bill of rights, must be read separately to each man.
Charley lifted his head and piped in a cheeky voice: "He is a man and a sailor" then wiping his nose with the back of his hand bent down industriously over his bit of rope. A few laughed. Others stared doubtfully. The ragged newcomer was indignant "That's a fine way to welcome a chap into a fo'c'sle," he snarled. "Are you men or a lot of 'artless canny-bals?"
At the end of that time, 'owever, owing to our being short-'anded, Jimmy was sent for'ard to work as ordinary seaman, and it began to be quite noticeable the way 'e avoided Bill. At last one day we got 'im alone down the fo'c'sle, and Bill put 'is arm round 'im and got im on the locker and asked 'im straight out where the money was. "Why, I chucked it overboard," he says. "I told you so afore.
A violent roll set them free again, and at the same time separated two chests in the fo'c'sle, which were standing one on top of the other. This enabled Satan, who was crouching in the lower one, half crazed with terror, to come flying madly up on deck and give his feelings full vent.
Snoring and drugged with ozone a kick would only have made them curse and turn on the other side, and as he talked his voice made part of that procession of noises inseparable from the fo'c'sle of a ship under sail against a head sea. He had been holding forth on the food and general conditions of this ship compared with the food and conditions of his last, when Harbutt cut in.
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