to pile itself higher
and higher as if unable to run out quick enough through the narrow
doors. The watch below in their shirts, and striding on long white legs,
resembled raving somnambulists; while now and then one of the watch on
deck would rush in, looking strangely over-dressed, listen a moment,
fling a rapid sentence into the noise and run out again; but a few
remained near the door, fascinated, and with one ear turned to the deck.
"Stick together, boys," roared Davis. Belfast tried to make himself
heard. Knowles grinned in a slow, dazed way. A short fellow with a
thick clipped beard kept on yelling periodically:--"Who's afeard? Who's
afeard?" Another one jumped up, excited, with blazing eyes, sent out
a string of unattached curses and sat down quietly. Two men discussed
familiarly, striking one another's breast in turn, to clinch arguments.
Three others, with their heads in a bunch, spoke all together with a
confidential air, and at the top of their voices. It was a stormy chaos
of speech where intelligible fragments tossing, struck the ear. One
could hear:--"In the last ship"--"Who cares? Try it on any one of us
if-------."

"Knock under"--"Not a hand's turn"--"He says he is all right"--"I always
thought"--"Never mind...." Donkin, crouching all in a heap against the
bowsprit, hunched his shoulderblades as high as his ears, and hanging
a peaked nose, resembled a sick vulture with ruffled plumes. Belfast,
straddling his legs, had a face red with yelling, and with arms thrown
up, figured a Maltese cross. The two Scandinavians, in a corner, had
the dumbfounded and distracted aspect of men gazing at a cataclysm. And,
beyond the light, Singleton stood in the smoke, monumental, indistinct,
with his head touching the beam; like a statue of heroic size in the
gloom of a crypt.

He stepped forward, impassive and big. The noise subsided like a broken
wave: but Belfast cried once more with uplifted arms:--"The man is
dying I tell ye!" then sat down suddenly on the hatch and took his head
between his hands. All looked at Singleton, gazing upwards from the
deck, staring out of dark corners, or turning their heads with curious
glances. They were expectant and appeased as if that old man, who looked
at no one, had possessed the secret of their uneasy indignations and
desires, a sharper vision, a clearer knowledge. And indeed standing
there amongst them, he had the uninterested appearance of one who had
seen multitudes of shi