Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/236

 heavy blue jersey, with an old black sou'wester tilted back off his forehead far enough to show up a shiny bald spot and disclose the fact that most of his hair grew upon his chin, was laboriously rolling a cask along the uneven timbers of the wharf.

Varge turned to speak to the negro again, but the latter had ducked down into the forecastle and disappeared.

Bumping along came the cask, Jonah Sully supplying the motive power now with his foot and now with his hands; occasionally, he tilted the sou'wester a little further back and flirted his sleeve across a wet brow. As the other drew nearer Varge saw that his face, what showed of it apart from the beard, was white as from illness—the skin, though thick and toughened, lacked the bronzed, ruddy hue of recent exposure.

A plank ran up from the wharf to the schooner's rail. With a grunt, the little man kicked the cask around at right angles to its former course, jolted it with some exertion onto the end of the plank, and started to roll it upwards. He succeeded to the extent of a foot—then he sat down suddenly, and the cask toppled off the plank, landing on the wharf with a scrunch that tried the temper of its staves.

Varge stepped quickly forward, placed the cask on the plank again, rolled it up to the rail, and then, jumping to the deck, reached up and lifted the cask down after him. By the time this was done and Varge was standing on the wharf again, Jonah Sully was picking himself up and yelling at him.

"Heh, there! Heh, there! Don't drop that there cask on the deck; you'll stove a hole in the plankin'!" he screamed anxiously. "Rastus 'll help you."