Page:Solo (1924).pdf/123

 fat iron bits and gazed into the sea, you could detect an amethyst tinge in the water as the rays of the sun probed down, revealing in the depths flecks and shreds, like the motes in sunbeams. You looked into the heart of a circle of mixed water and light, warmest and most amethystine at the centre and becoming less translucent, and colder in tint, towards the rim of vision, like the misty halos surrounding street lamps. Then perhaps an olive shadow would writhe across the circle, and you would tease yourself by imagining that you had, after all, obeyed an impulse to tie the end of a lee brace about your waist and dive overboard for a swim. If you had! Ugh! For however cautiously those shadowy monsters might approach a bait of salt pork, you had no assurance that they were abstinent in the case of cabin-boys seductively browned by the sun!

Swansen, the Swede—the old man referred to all foreigners as "dis-and-datters"—was drawing bucketfuls of water which Otto poured down a pipe leading to the captain's bathroom. The sun wrapped itself about its victims. For twenty-four hours there had been no stirring of air, except for little rushes caused by the sails as they collapsed against the shrouds. The ship rocked like some canopied cradle in a bowl of jelly. The captain, whose hobby was sailmaking, was seated on the poop with needle, beeswax and palm, at work on a mending job.

The tank was filled, Otto screwed down the brass plate, and as he pattered forward, his enormous, bare feet stuck to the tar that bubbled up between the smooth planks. He seemed unaware of it. He was incredibly tough, as he was incredibly tall, ugly, powerful, and good-natured. His face was distorted in a friendly grin that revealed gaps between his teeth and wrinkled the narrow space between his piggy blue eyes and reddish curls. Swansen had drawn two buckets more than necessary. Otto