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Updated: June 11, 2025
Or set him thinking I was dotty. I was walking about the fo'cas'le head, feeling like this, when I saw the light for the third time. It was very bright and big, and I could see it move, as I watched. This again showed me that it must be very close. "Surely," I thought, "the Second Mate must see it now, for himself." I did not sing out this time, right away.
I reached the door on the portside, leading into the fo'cas'le, and was about to enter, when something made me look behind. As I did so, I had a shaker. Away aft, a dim, shadowy form stood in the wake of a swaying belt of moonlight, that swept the deck a bit abaft the main-mast. It was the same figure that I had just been attributing to my fancy.
'e said Williams 'ad 'ad er fall." He broke off, and looked across the fo'cas'le. "Where is 'e?" he inquired, in a puzzled voice. I glanced at the others; but no one seemed inclined to start yarning about it. "He fell from the t'gallant rigging!" I said. "Where is 'e?" he repeated. "Smashed up," I said. "He's lying on the hatch." "Dead?" he asked. I nodded.
As I paced slowly to and fro across the fo'cas'le head, I was thinking about the affair of the morning. At first, my thoughts were about the Old Man.
The watch below were all asleep, and not one of them knew what had happened. All at once, Plummer, whose wheel it was, stepped over the starboard washboard, into the fo'cas'le. "What's up, anyway?" he asked. "Is Williams much 'urt?" "Sh!" I said. "You'll wake the others. Who's taken your wheel?" "Tammy ther Second sent 'im. 'e said I could go forrard an' 'ave er smoke.
I replaced my lamp in the binnacle, and took hold of the wheel; yet, time and again, I glanced behind and I was very thankful when, a few minutes later, four bells went, and I was relieved. Though the rest of the chaps were forrard in the fo'cas'le, I did not go there.
But inactivity and confinement to the fo'cas'le soon worked havoc with his physique, so that appetite, and even desire of life itself, temporarily disappeared in the gloom of seasickness. In spite of difficulties, Jim tried to find out something about the boat. The seamen were none too friendly; but by patching up his almost forgotten French and by signs, he learned something.
There was absolutely no wind, and even the everlasting creak, creak of the gear seemed to ease off at times. At the wheel there was nothing whatever to do. I might just as well have been forrard, smoking in the fo'cas'le. Down on the main-deck, I could see the loom of the lanterns that had been lashed up to the sherpoles in the fore and main rigging.
"No Sir," I replied, and he went back to the Second Mate; while I walked forrard to the fo'cas'le to get something to eat. "Your whack's in the kettle, Jessop," said Tom, as I stepped in over the washboard. "An' I got your lime-juice in a pannikin." "Thanks," I said, and sat down. As I stowed away my grub, I took no notice of the chatter of the others. I was too stuffed with my own thoughts.
About half of them at the factories get addled brains if they stay long. Believe in things the bushmen believe, ghosts and magic, and such. Perhaps it's the climate, but on this coast you get fancies you get nowhere else. I'd sooner take look-out on the fo'cas'le in a North Sea gale than keep anchor watch in an African calm." Lister nodded.
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