rned; others, with averted heads, sent
half-reluctant glances out of the corners of their eyes. They resembled
criminals conscious of misdeeds more than honest men distracted by
doubt; only two or three stared frankly, but stupidly, with lips
slightly open. All expected James Wait to say something, and, at the
same time, had the air of knowing beforehand what he would say. He
leaned his back against the doorpost, and with heavy eyes swept over
them a glance domineering and pained, like a sick tyrant overawing a
crowd of abject but untrustworthy slaves.

No one went away. They waited in fascinated dread. He said ironically,
with gasps between the words:--

"Thank you... chaps. You... are nice... and... quiet... you are! Yelling
so... before... the door...."

He made a longer pause, during which he worked his ribs in an
exaggerated labour of breathing. It was intolerable. Feet were shuffled.
Belfast let out a groan; but Donkin above blinked his red eyelids with
invisible eyelashes, and smiled bitterly over the nigger's head.

The nigger went on again with surprising ease. He gasped no more, and
his voice rang, hollow and loud, as though he had been talking in an
empty cavern. He was contemptuously angry.

"I tried to get a wink of sleep. You know I can't sleep o' nights.
And you come jabbering near the door here like a blooming lot of old
women.... You think yourselves good shipmates. Do you?... Much you care
for a dying man!"

Belfast spun away from the pigstye. "Jimmy," he cried tremulously, "if
you hadn't been sick I would------"

He stopped. The nigger waited awhile, then said, in a gloomy tone:--"You
would.... What? Go an' fight another such one as yourself. Leave
me alone. It won't be for long. I'll soon die.... It's coming right
enough!"

Men stood around very still and with exasperated eyes. It was just what
they had expected, and hated to hear, that idea of a stalking death,
thrust at them many times a day like a boast and like a menace by this
obnoxious nigger. He seemed to take a pride in that death which, so far,
had attended only upon the ease of his life; he was overbearing about
it, as if no one else in the world had ever been intimate with such
a companion; he paraded it unceasingly before us with an affectionate
persistence that made its presence indubitable, and at the same time
incredible. No man could be suspected of such monstrous friendship! Was
he a reality--or was he a sham--this ever-exp