far as
one could hear, chimney-sweeping, cinder-riddling, furniture-moving,
clock-winding, and Spring-cleaning, of the most awful nature, all going
on at once, and in a storm of yelling and scolding, which was no part of
our domestic ways. But in another minute I knew where I was, and by the
light coming through a little round porthole above me, I could see my
companion.

He was still sleeping, so that I could satisfy my keen curiosity without
rudeness. He had indeed given up the only bit of space to me, and was
himself doubled up among lumber in a fashion that must have been very
trying to the length of his limbs. For he was taller than I, though not,
I thought, much older; two years or so, perhaps. The cut of his clothes
(not their raggedness, though they were ragged as well as patched)
confirmed me in my conviction that he was "not exactly a gentleman"; but
I felt a little puzzled about him, for, broad as his accent was, he was
even less exactly of the Tim Binder and Bob Furniss class.

He was not good-looking, and yet I hardly know any word that would so
fittingly describe his face in the repose of sleep, and with that bit of
light concentrated upon it, as the word "noble." It was drawn and
pinched with pain and the endurance of pain, and I never saw anything so
thin, except his hands, which lay close to his sides--both clenched. But
I do think he would have been handsome if his face had not been almost
aggressively intelligent when awake, and if his eyebrows and eyelashes
had had any colour. His hair was fair but not bright, and it was
straight without being smooth, and tossed into locks that had no grace
or curl. And why he made me think of a Bible picture--Jacob lying at the
foot of the ladder to heaven, or something of that sort--I could not
tell, and did not puzzle myself to wonder, for the ship was moving, and
there was a great deal to be seen out of the window, tiny as it was.

It looked on to the dock, where men were running about in the old
bewildering fashion. To-day it was not so bewildering to me, because I
could see that the men were working with some purpose that affected our
vessel, though the directions in which they ran, dragging ropes as thick
as my leg, to the grinding of equally monstrous chains, were as
mysterious as the figures of some dance one does not know. As to the
noises they made, men and boys anywhere are given to help on their work
with sounds of some sort, but I could not have beli