Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/178

166 heart leaped with pleasure. He had been taken with so great a horror of the ship, since the vision of the hag that his muddled brain had planned suicide, or a life in the scrub among the blacks, rather than another day between decks. The words of Willy Crackers lit up his brain. They showed him the ease, the grandeur of the life of nigger driver. The joyful nights over the jorum; the English ship; the thronged quays of Bristol. He took the offer with a curse.

"Billy," he said, "it'll be meat and drink to me. I ain't been feeling good these last days. Going to sea ain't right for me. It's the air or something. A spell ashore is what I want: just what I want—that, and sleep. I'll get my chest ashore when the cutter comes in for the casks tomorrow."

"Why, right then," said his friend, "you look pretty green in the gills with it. And now let's liquor on it."

He poured out two more noggins from the pan, and the two drank to each other.

"There's a song I mind me," said Joe, "I'll sing it to ye."