beasts.

"I ain't ate outa your hand yet, have I?" was the reply.

Mr. Pike tried to say something, still holding the cripple suspended,
but he could do no more than strangle in his impotence of rage.

"You're an old stiff, an old stiff, an old stiff," Mulligan Jacobs
chanted, equally incoherent and unimaginative with brutish fury.

"Say it again and over you go," the mate managed to enunciate
thickly.

"You're an old stiff," gasped Mulligan Jacobs. He was flung. He
soared through the air with the might of the fling, and even as he
soared and fell through the darkness he reiterated:

"Old stiff! Old stiff !"

He fell among the men on Number Two hatch, and there were confusion
and movement below, and groans.

Mr. Pike paced up and down the narrow house and gritted his teeth.
Then he paused. He leaned his arms on the bridge-rail, rested his
head on his arms for a full minute, then groaned:

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear." That was all. Then he went
aft, slowly, dragging his feet along the bridge.