of the windlass in the pose of a crouching chimera, blinking its green
eyes at its old friend. It seemed to meditate a leap on to the old man's
lap over the bent back of the ordinary seaman who sat at Singleton's
feet. Young Charley was lean and long-necked. The ridge of his
backbone made a chain of small hills under the old shirt. His face of a
street-boy--a face precocious, sagacious, and ironic, with deep downward
folds on each side of the thin, wide mouth--hung low over his bony
knees. He was learning to make a lanyard knot with a bit of an old
rope. Small drops of perspiration stood out on his bulging forehead; he
sniffed strongly from time to time, glancing out of the corners of
his restless eyes at the old seaman, who took no notice of the puzzled
youngster muttering at his work.

The noise increased. Little Belfast seemed, in the heavy heat of the
forecastle, to boil with facetious fury. His eyes danced; in the crimson
of his face, comical as a mask, the mouth yawned black, with strange
grimaces. Facing him, a half-undressed man held his sides, and, throwing
his head back, laughed with wet eyelashes. Others stared with amazed
eyes. Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks smoked short pipes,
swinging bare brown feet above the heads of those who, sprawling below
on sea-chests, listened, smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over the white
rims of berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the bodies were
lost in the gloom of those places, that resembled narrow niches for
coffins in a whitewashed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder.
Archie, with compressed lips, drew himself in, seemed to shrink into
a smaller space, and sewed steadily, industrious and dumb. Belfast
shrieked like an inspired Dervish:--"... So I seez to him, boys, seez
I, 'Beggin' yer pardon, sorr,' seez I to that second mate of that
steamer--'beggin' your-r-r pardon, sorr, the Board of Trade must 'ave
been drunk when they granted you your certificate!' 'What do you say,