Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/489

 grimy of face and hairy, booted with half-Wellingtons and belted in Wapping fashion, and timid people would have thought that they carried a murderous air because each man wore a sheath upon his hip, in which lay a very sharp blade.

The wooden cave in which these men sat, rose and fell as though it were the extreme end of a long board violently see-saw'd; and this motion, combined with the smell of the fumes of the slush-fed lamp and a vapour rising out of a small tub of boiled pork, not to mention other odours such as might be produced by well-worn, newly- greased sea-boots, bedding which had made several voyages round the world, sooty clay pipes, old ropes, stale salt water, and many mysteries of malodorous commodities stowed below in the hold and forepeak, must instantly have upset the stomach of any landsman who out of curiosity should have put his head into the little hatch to see what was inside of it.

This cave was indeed a ship's forecastle, but the seven men who sat in it were mariners who had for many years been tossed by the various oceans of the world, and could not possibly have been sea-sick, even though they should have been offered a handsome reward to try.

One of them was a large, strong man, with a shaggy head of hair and a beard like rope-yarns. He looked as though he had taken a header and come up again to blow crowned with black seaweed. This strong man suddenly, and with a sulky fury of gesture, whipped the knife out of the sheath that was strapped to his hip, and, plunging it into a lump of pork, lifted the horrid block into the air, and cried out—

"Here it is agin!"

As he pronounced these words, the little square of hatch was obscured by the inter- position of a man's body.

"The smell of that there pork," said the voice belonging to the body in the hatch, "is something to sit upon, something strong enough to lean agin. Why, a man might turn to and chop them fumes into first-class bunk-boards. Talk o' strength!"

"Come below, cook!" bawled one of the seven men.

"No; I've got to see to the capt'n's dinner. But I'm of ye if there's to be trouble. When I signed it was for wittles and a dry bottom and a ship's company. Pump, pump, and nothen to eat! Nothen to eat and pump, pump! Here's logic as don't tally with this covey's reckoning for one." And the man, violently smiting himself upon the breast, disappeared.

The powerful sailor who had held the pork aloft whilst the cook discoursed, shook it off the blade into the tub again and spat.

"It's about time," said he, "that all hands was agreed."

"All hands is agreed," said one of the sailors, "'cepting that blooming Dutchman Peter. But if he don't come into it it'll be a bad job for one of us if, on some dark night, him and me happens to be aloft together."

"That there Peter," said a sailor, "was a-boasting to me that he'd ha' shipped for a pound a month; d'ye know he'd eat a shipmate's shirt if by so doing he thought he would airn a shilling by saving his allowance."

"This is sweet meat to Peter," said one of the seven, pointing to the pork, "and a pound a month is good money to Peter; and if Peter and the likes of him could get their way, then if ye wanted to see what sort of man an English sailor looked like ye'd have to ask the master of the fust workhus as hove in sight to show him."