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Updated: June 13, 2025
A foc'sle must have its leading spirit, and the cockship is a position much coveted and eagerly striven for in most ships, decided only after combat between the fighting men of the crew. But the Golden Bough had an extraordinary crew. The majority of the men in my watch were just stiffs, who possessed neither the experience nor desire to contest for leadership.
Fitzgibbon, himself, was overhauling Nils' gear. The tradesmen stood idle and watchful, one near either door of the foc'sle. Out on deck, Holy Joe was busy; we could hear him urging his crowd to be quiet and peaceful.
I went into the port foc'sle to look at him and he looked bad, lying there unconscious. The squareheads had washed his face, but had not ventured to touch his arm. His face was in a shocking state, and I feared his body might be broken, as was Nils' body.
Then they led her forward to show her the foc'sle, at which she wept again, and must needs go down to see Harvey's identical bunk, and there she found the nigger cook cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though she were some one he had expected to meet for years.
With these ideas firmly fixed he went aboard again, and going into the lonely foc'sle, climbed into his bunk and forgot his sorrows in sleep in a sleep so sound that the others, upon their return an hour later, failed to wake him, until Henry, as a last expedient, threw a slice of bread at him. After which everybody had to keep awake all night to mount guard over their lives.
"Jack S-hreve, sir," I answered. "Shreve? Now, what signboard did you rob? Shreve is a good name, too good for a foc'sle rat. Did you come by it honestly? Did you have a father by that name? I dare say not. A gutter product would not know his father, eh, my lad?" There was no mistaking the deliberate intent of the insult, or its foul meaning.
Seat ye!" a voice Harvey had not heard called from the foc'sle. Disko Troop, Tom Platt, Long Jack, and Salters went forward on the word. Little Penn bent above his square deep-sea reel and the tangled cod-lines; Manuel lay down full length on the deck, and Dan dropped into the hold, where Harvey heard him banging casks with a hammer. "Salt," he said, returning.
But I had not suspected him of treachery to his foc'sle mates, because he was an old sailor and a good one, and there were plenty of stiffs on board more fitted, I thought, for spy's work. But Cockney was the man. I could not mistake his voice for another's. He was even now down below bearing false witness against my friend. I watched the deck closely, and pretty soon I saw Cockney go forward.
Much the most capable helpers whom the lonely printer had in his first years were two one-time compositors who had turned sailors and who, tiring of foc'sle life under Yankee captains, made up their minds to resume the stick and apron in the cannibal islands. Impish Maori boys made not inappropriate "devils."
He would have shot Lindquist, I am sure, for winging a man, or worse, meant little to the mate of the Golden Bough, and the squarehead bravely stood his ground. But the threat to shoot into the men who were shielding him had the effect of drawing the parson out of the foc'sle. He suddenly appeared in the lighted doorway.
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