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Updated: May 13, 2025
"I love that tape of Chesapeake Bay chanteys, by the way." "We had fun with it," Jason said. Joe slid into a chair. "It was nice hearing your voice got me across North Dakota and Montana last year." "Just a foc'sle tenor," Jason said and explained that he was on his way home from Singapore a conference on Data Protocols for the 21st Century. "We gave a paper," he said.
I strutted away the day in lonely glory. I had not the courage to violate the hoary traditions of the foc'sle and join my ship sober, so I imbibed as steadily as my youthful stomach permitted. Towards evening I was, as sailors say, "half seas over." I was mellow, but not befuddled. I saw things clearly, too clearly. Of a sudden I felt an urgent necessity to get away from the Swede's barroom.
At a call from Raymond the boats came alongside, and as the crews clambered on deck Maliê told them how to dispose themselves about the ship so that when the signal was given the mutineers could be seised without their being afforded any opportunity of resistance. Five or six of his best men followed him aft, whilst the others mingled with the crew, most of them going down into the foc'sle.
Then, I became aware that Newman was not in that bunk; and a rapid survey of the foc'sle showed he was not in any bunk. He was gone, though his sea-bag was still lying on the floor. The bunk I thought he was in contained an occupant of very different aspect from my grim companion of the night before.
I have already mentioned that the Golden Bough had a topgallant forecastle; that is, the crew's quarters were away forward, in the bows of the ship, beneath the forecastle head. It was a gloomy cavern; the bright day of outdoors was a muddy light within. Well, in the floor of the port foc'sle, wherein I was sitting, was the hatch to the forepeak, below.
We fell in on the foc'sle, leavin' a large open space by the capstan, where our sail-maker was sittin' sewin' broken firebars into the foot of an old 'ammick. 'E looked like a corpse, an' Mucky had another fit o' hysterics, an' you could 'ear us breathin' 'ard. It beat anythin' in the theatrical line that even us Archimandrites had done an' we was the ship you could trust.
"I've got him!" croaked Maclean, with a grim glance at his unconscious foe. "How about the rest?" "All sigarnio! What shall I do?" "Drive them forward to the foc'sle." Sievers obeyed, and very soon five splendidly upholstered, but shamefaced-looking gentlemen, three stewards, and four sailors were standing underneath the beacon light before the forecastle companion.
He needed assistance, too; he had no wind for curses, and bent double nursing the injured spot while he grunted at the tradesmen to pick up the chest and carry it aft. He paid no attention to the rest of us, but as he hobbled out of the foc'sle in the wake of the others, he gave Newman a look of such malignant hatred that we all knew just where he placed the blame for the episode.
The man who called us said that the little squarehead the lad Swope had manhandled had again fallen afoul the masters. The hurts Swope had inflicted prevented the boy moving about as quickly as Mister Fitzgibbon desired, so the bucko had laid him out and walked upon him during the mid-watch. When he was through, the lad had crawled on his hands and knees into the foc'sle, and collapsed.
When we had gained the foc'sle, the rage in our hearts found expression in bitter cursing of our luck, the Swede, the ship and the officers. But Newman did not curse, nor did we expect him to. We sensed that he was glad he was at sea in the Golden Bough, that he was there for some peculiar purpose of his own. He was, of course, the dominant personality in the foc'sle, indeed, in the ship.
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