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Then I came on deck and watched Moorshed revolving in his orbit from the canvas bustle and torpedo-tubes aft, by way of engine-room, conning-tower, and wheel, to the doll's house of a foc'sle learned in experience withheld from me, moved by laws beyond my knowledge, authoritative, entirely adequate, and yet, in heart, a child at his play.
As I learned afterwards, when the mate sang out for his watch to man the braces, all jumped to obey save the parson; he stayed with Nils. His absence was noted immediately, for the mate was lynx-eyed; and Fitzgibbon was all for invading the foc'sle and hauling out the truant by the scruff of the neck.
Under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the foc'sle table down and opened, utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two men, a checker-board between them, Uncle Salters snarling at Penn's every move. "What's the matter naow?" said the former, as Harvey, one hand in the leather loop at the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the cook.
Came morning, but not the lady. And the foc'sle was in sad need of her ministrations. Quite half the crew needed salves and bandages for their bruises and cuts, and there was, besides, a more serious case demanding attention. When the starboard watch was called at four o'clock, we heard a low, insistent moaning in the port foc'sle.
With that he turned on his heel and walked into the foc'sle. When he had disappeared something seemed to have gone from the air we breathed, something electric and vitalizing. There was an immediate let down of the nervous tension that had gripped us, a common sigh, and a half-hysterical snigger from some fellow behind me.
But a week later the two nearly upset the Hattie S. in a wild attempt to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied to a stick. The grim brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and between the three of them it was a mercy they all got off alive. At last, after playing blindman's-buff in the fog, there came a morning when Disko shouted down the foc'sle: "Hurry, boys! We're in taown!"
They sounded worse than harsh, or vile, they sounded inhuman. The words came soft and melodious from his lips, but they were forked with poison and viciousness. As we of the foc'sle listened to him curse the helmsman, that first morning out, each man felt fear's icy finger touch the pit of his stomach.
There was a rapping on the deck. "Uncle Salters has catched his luck," said Dan as his father departed. "It's blown clear," Disko cried, and all the foc'sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great rollers behind it.
And then the whole foc'sle would look at me as one man, and there would be respect in their eyes. For only very hard cases ever stopped at the Knitting Swede's. Well, I found the Swede's place easily enough. And he was there in person to welcome me.
Penn took up the heavy basket of fish-livers, emptied them into a cask with a hinged top lashed by the foc'sle; then he too dropped out of sight in the cabin. "Boys clean up after dressin' down an' first watch in ca'am weather is boy's watch on the We're Here."
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