for mere despair.

The vision of it made Goodwin desperate.

"I haven't signed on, sir," he protested. "I've been shanghaied here.
This ain't."

He paused under the daunting compulsion of Mr. Fant's eye.

"You've signed on all right," said Mr. Fant. "Your name's John Smith
an' you signed on yesterday. You don't want to make any mistake about
that, Smith."

He spoke as mildly as ever and yet was menacing and terrible. But
Goodwin was insistent.

"My name's Goodwin," he persisted. "Tom Mowbray drugged me and shoved
me on board. I want to go ashore."

Mr. Fant turned to go aft. "You get yer head into a bucket," he
counselled. "Hurry up, now. There's work waitin' to be done."

"I won't!" shouted Goodwin.

"Eh!" Mr. Fant's voice was still mild as he uttered the exclamation,
but before Goodwin could repeat himself he had moved. As if some
spring in him had been released from tension, the mild and prim Mr.
Fant whirled on his heel, and a fist took Goodwin on the edge of the
jaw and sent him gasping and clucking on to his back; while, with the
precision of a movement rehearsed and practiced, Mr. Fant's booted
foot swung forward and kicked him into the scuppers. He lay there on
his back, looking up in an extremity of terror and astonishment at
the unmoved face of the mate.

"Get up, Smith," commanded Mr. Fant. Goodwin obeyed, scarcely
conscious of the pain in his face and flank in the urgency of the
moment. "Now you get the bucket, same as I told you, and when you've
freshened yourself come aft an' I'll start you on a job. See?"

"Aye, aye, sir," responded Goodwin mechanically, and started for-ard.
The Etna had absorbed him into her system; he was initiated already
to his role of a driven beast; but tenacious as an altar fire there
glowed yet within him the warmth of his anger against Tom Mowbray. It
was secret, beyond the reach of Mr. Fant's fist; the fist was only
another item in Tom Mowbray's debt.

From his place on the crossjack-yard, to which Mr. Fant sent him,
Goodwin had presently a view of the captain's wife. She came to the
poop from the cabin companion-way and leaned for a while on the
taffrail, seeming to gaze at the town undulating over the hills,
dwarfed by the distance. It was when she turned to go down again that
Goodwin had a full view of her face, bleak and rigid, with greying
hair drawn tightly back from the temples, as formal and blank as the
face of a clock. It was told of her that she would