Blackie stopped grooming Cockney for mob leader;
they had seen that he lacked guts in a pinch, and that finished him
with them. The other stiffs still welcomed and admired him (for,
although he was a good sailor, he was one of them at heart, and, after
all, hadn't he tried to stick the mate?), but he was no longer their
hero. Aye, it was quite a fall for Cockney; he lost a lot of face when
he ran away from my fists. He kept out of my foc'sle thereafter.

I mentioned that this fight started because Cockney came into our
foc'sle during his watch on deck. Now, that illustrates the surprising
slackness of discipline in the port watch. Just a few days before the
mate was ready to shoot Holy Joe for going below during his watch on
deck, but he never bothered his head about Cockney's much worse
offense. In fact, during these strange days he seemed not to bother
his head about anything his men did. He promenaded on the poop during
his watches on deck, alone, or arm-in-arm with the captain, and just
about left the ship to sail herself. No wonder the stiffs commenced to
believe they could take liberties; in fact, they could take them in the
mate's watch, and get away with it.

But they couldn't take liberties in the second mate's watch. You bet
they couldn't! Bucko Lynch curbed his vocabulary and stopped using his
fists, as the captain ordered, but he didn't stop working his men.
There was no slackness in his watch; he kept us up to scratch. That
made the starboard stiffs especially bitter against him. They felt
themselves cheated of the easy times Fitzgibbon's men were having.

But the sailors didn't feel that way about it. They were worried, just
as I was. The sailors knew ships as the stiffs did not. They could
_feel_ ships. Those dumb squareheads could not reason it out as I
could (with Newman's assistance), but they could feel the undercurrent
of intrigue. They were glad to escape the thumpings to which the mates
had accustomed them; but they were not satisfied with the new order for
they could feel that this strange peace was unreal, unhealthful. Aye,
the calm before the typhoon. They felt it just as I felt it, just as
Nigger felt it. As for pessimistic Nigger, so strictly did he mind his
own business these quiet days he was like a dumb man, a silent brown
shadow. But he went on sharpening his knife.

To heighten the squareheads' foreboding, and to scare the wits half out
of us all, Nils' ghost visit