work
is as heavy as theirs--I'm thinking--and longer hours. Did you ever see
them down the stokehold? Like fiends they look--firing--firing--firing--down
there."

He pointed his forefinger at the deck. Some gloomy thought darkened his
shining face, fleeting, like the shadow of a travelling cloud over the
light of a peaceful sea. The relieved watch tramped noisily forward,
passing in a body across the sheen of the doorway. Some one cried,
"Good-night!" Belfast stopped for a moment and looked at Jimmy,
quivering and speechless with repressed emotion. He gave the cook a
glance charged with dismal foreboding, and vanished. The cook cleared
his throat. Jimmy stared upwards and kept as still as a man in hiding.

The night was clear, with a gentle breeze. Above the mastheads the
resplendent curve of the Milky Way spanned the sky like a triumphal
arch of eternal light, thrown over the dark pathway of the earth. On the
forecastle head a man whistled with loud precision a lively jig, while
another could be heard faintly, shuffling and stamping in time. There
came from forward a confused murmur of voices, laughter--snatches of
song. The cook shook his head, glanced obliquely at Jimmy, and began to
mutter. "Aye. Dance and sing. That's all they think of. I am surprised
that Providence don't get tired.... They forget the day that's sure to
come... but you...."

Jimmy drank a gulp of tea, hurriedly, as though he had stolen it, and
shrank under his blanket, edging away towards the bulkhead. The cook got
up, closed the door, then sat down again and said distinctly:--

"Whenever I poke my galley fire I think of you chaps--swearing, stealing,
lying, and worse--as if there was no such thing as another world.... Not
bad fellows, either, in a way," he conceded, slowly; then, after a pause
of regretful musing, he went on in a resigned tone:--"Well, well. They
will have a hot time of it. Hot! Did I say? The furnaces of one of them
White Star boats ain't nothing to it."

He kept very quiet for a while. There was a great stir in his brain; an
addled vision of bright outlines; an exciting row of rousing songs
and groans of pain. He suffered, enjoyed, admired, approved. He was
delighted, frightened, exalted--as on that evening (the only time in his
life--twenty-seven years ago; he loved to recall the number of
years) when as a young man he had--through keeping bad company--become
intoxicated in an East-end music-hall. A tide of sudden feeling