They had been ranged closely, after having been shaken into submission,
cuffed a little to allay excitement, addressed in gruff words of
encouragement that sounded like promises of evil. They sat on the deck
in ghastly, drooping rows, and at the end the carpenter, with two hands
to help him, moved busily from place to place, setting taut and hitching
the life-lines. The boatswain, with one leg and one arm embracing a
stanchion, struggled with a lamp pressed to his breast, trying to get
a light, and growling all the time like an industrious gorilla. The
figures of seamen stooped repeatedly, with the movements of gleaners,
and everything was being flung into the bunker: clothing, smashed wood,
broken china, and the dollars, too, gathered up in men's jackets. Now
and then a sailor would stagger towards the doorway with his arms full
of rubbish; and dolorous, slanting eyes followed his movements.
With every roll of the ship the long rows of sitting Celestials would
sway forward brokenly, and her headlong dives knocked together the line
of shaven polls from end to end. When the wash of water rolling on the
deck died away for a moment, it seemed to Jukes, yet quivering from his
exertions, that in his mad struggle down there he had overcome the wind
somehow: that a silence had fallen upon the ship, a silence in which the
sea struck thunderously at her sides.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116