This was
already stowed. She had coaled and was bound to clear by dawn. Now she
rested in idleness, most of her crew taking their pleasure ashore, a
Sabbath calm pervading her amid the strident activities going forward on
every hand. The ship's dog, a curly-haired black retriever, lay on the
clean deck in the sunshine stretched on his side, all four legs limp,
save when, pestered beyond endurance, he whisked into a sitting position
to snap at the all too numerous flies.
The boatswain--a heavily built East Anglian, born within sight of Boston
Stump five-and-forty years ago, his face seamed and pitted by smallpox
almost to the extinction of expression and altogether to that of
eyebrows, eyelashes and continuity of beard--spat deliberately and
voluminously into the oily, refuse-stained water, lapping against the
ship's side over twenty feet below, and resumed a desultory conversation
which for the moment had fallen dead.
"So that's the reason of his giving us hell's delight, like he has all
day, cleaning up?--Got a lady coming aboard to tea has he? If she's too
fine to take us as we are, a deal better let 'er stay ashore, in my
opinion.
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