The other sprawled aft, and at a nearer sight of him some of the men
broke out into nervous titters. There was some excuse, for surely such a
scarecrow had never before been the sport of wind and wave. A thing of
shreds he was, elaborately ragged, a face overrun with a scrub of beard,
and preternaturally drawn, surmounted by a stiff-dried, dirty, cloth
semi-turban, with a wide, forbidding stain along the side, worked out the
likeness to a make-up.

"My God!" cackled Forsythe with an hysterical explosion; and again, "My
God!"

A long-drawn, irrepressible aspiration of expectancy rose from the
warship's decks as the stranger raised his haggard face, turned eyes
unseeingly upon them, and fell back. The forward occupant stirred not,
save as the boat rolled.

From between decks someone called out, sharply, an order. In the grim
silence it seemed strangely incongruous that the measured business of a
ship's life should be going forward as usual. Something within the
newcomer's consciousness stirred to that voice of authority.
Mechanically, like some huge, hideous toy, he raised first one arm, then
the other, and hitched himself halfway up on the stern seat. His mouth
opened. His face wrinkled. He seemed groping for the meaning of a joke at
which he knew he ought to laugh. Suddenly from his lips in surprising
volume, raucous, rasping, yet with a certain rollicking deviltry fit to
set the head a-tilt, burst a chanty:

"Oh, their coffin was their ship, and their grave it was the sea:
_Blow high, blow low, what care we!_