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So away with you into the locker, and let us get to work." Then, with the man from the boat, the carpenter and his companions were pushed into the sail-locker and the door securely fastened. Looking down from the skylight into the cabin Rodman saw that the cooper had not yet come to, and therefore no danger need be apprehended from him.
"Get your palm and needle and sew the beggar up. You'll find some old canvas in the sail-locker. Make it do." "What'll I put on his feet, sir?" the man asked, after the customary "Ay, ay, sir." "We'll see to that," Wolf Larsen answered, and elevated his voice in a call of "Cooky!" Thomas Mugridge popped out of his galley like a jack-in-the-box. "Go below and fill a sack with coal."
I shall presently find means to smuggle you out of here into the sail-locker, which communicates with the lobby. But there is an opening, a sort of square for hauling the sails out, which gives straight on the quarter-deck and which is never closed in fine weather, so as to give air to the sails.
"So my wife was in the sail-locker with this convict, and he was making up to her? Well, well!" "You know that creature is lying, Angus!" broke in another voice. Aye, and I very nearly gave myself away by craning my head to see the speaker. For this was the lady's voice, hot with anger and resentment and loathing.
Before I reached the sail-locker, the door to the deck, at the end of the alleyway, burst open, and the tradesman, Morton, pitched headlong over the base-board. He scrambled to his hands and knees and scuttled towards me. There was a whistling thud near my head. I leaped back into the cabin, out of range, so quickly I tripped and sat down hard upon the deck.
We started a quiet search and ultimately Ransome discovered him curled up in the sail-locker, which opened into the lobby by a sliding door. When remonstrated with, he muttered sulkily, "It's cool in there." That wasn't true. It was only dark there. The fundamental defects of his face were not improved by its uniform livid hue. The disease disclosed its low type in a startling way.
There were three doors opening upon the alley-way; the one on the port side was the inner door of the sail-locker, the two on the starboard side let into the mates' rooms. That much I knew. I also knew that I need not fear these doors, since both mates were on deck. But at the end of the alleyway was the saloon, the great common room of the cabin.
"You won't shut us up in the sail-locker and scuttle the ship and let us drown, will you?" asked the carpenter. "No; I'm no murderer, unless you make me one. If there is any one I have a grudge against it is Mr. Newman and the cooper; but I won't do more to the cooper than I have already done. Still I'm not going to leave the ship in your hands until I have messed her up a bit.
I had no intention of going out on that dangerous deck, my object was to see if the inner door to the sail-locker was unlocked. In the sail-locker, I thought, we could hide, the three of us, until the fight died down. But my design was frustrated.
We were in the sail-locker, scrambling on our knees over the sails. A sudden thought struck me. I saw myself wandering barefooted, bareheaded, the sun beating on my dark poll. I snatched off my floppy hat and tried hurriedly in the dark to ram it on my other self. He dodged and fended off silently. I wonder what he thought had come to me before he understood and suddenly desisted.
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