The Gaffer reclined in his bunk, reading by the light of a smoky and
evil-smelling lamp. He had been mate of the _J. R. MacNeill_, and was
now captain as well as patriarch of the party. He possessed three
books--the Bible, Milton's "Paradise Lost," and an odd volume of
"The Turkish Spy." Just now he was reading "The Turkish Spy."
The lamplight glinted on the rim of his spectacles and on the silvery
hairs in his beard, the slack of which he had tucked under the edge of
his blanket. His lips moved as he read, and now and then he broke off
to glance mildly at Faed and the Snipe, who were busy beside the fire
with a greasy pack of cards; or to listen to the peevish grumbling of
Lashman in the bunk below him. Lashman had taken to his bed six weeks
before with scurvy, and complained incessantly; and though they hardly
knew it, these complaints were wearing his comrades' nerves to
fiddle-strings--doing the mischief that cold and bitter hard work and
the cruel loneliness had hitherto failed to do. Long Ede lay stretched
by the fire in a bundle of skins, reading in his only book, the Bible,
open now at the Song of Solomon. Cooney had finished patching a pair of
trousers, and rolled himself in his hammock, whence he stared at the
roof and the moonlight streaming up there through the little trap-doors
and chivying the layers of smoke. Whenever Lashman broke out into fresh
quaverings of self-pity, Cooney's hands opened and shut again, till the
nails dug hard into the palm. He groaned at length, exasperated beyond
endurance.

"Oh, stow it, George! Hang it all, man! . . ."

He checked himself, sharp and short: repentant, and rebuked by the
silence of the others. They were good seamen all, and tender dealing
with a sick shipmate was part of their code.