below him. Lashman had taken to his bed six weeks
before with scurvy, and complained incessantly; and though they hardly
knew it, these complaints were wearing his comrades' nerves to
fiddle-strings--doing the mischief that cold and bitter hard work and
the cruel loneliness had hitherto failed to do. Long Ede lay stretched
by the fire in a bundle of skins, reading in his only book, the Bible,
open now at the Song of Solomon. Cooney had finished patching a pair of
trousers, and rolled himself in his hammock, whence he stared at the
roof and the moonlight streaming up there through the little trap-doors
and chivying the layers of smoke. Whenever Lashman broke out into fresh
quaverings of self-pity, Cooney's hands opened and shut again, till the
nails dug hard into the palm. He groaned at length, exasperated beyond
endurance.

"Oh, stow it, George! Hang it all, man! . . ."

He checked himself, sharp and short: repentant, and rebuked by the
silence of the others. They were good seamen all, and tender dealing
with a sick shipmate was part of their code.

Lashman's voice, more querulous than ever, cut into the silence like a
knife--

"That's it. You've thought it for weeks, and now you say it.
I've knowed it all along. I'm just an encumbrance, and the sooner
you're shut of me the better, says you. You needn't to fret. I'll be
soon out of it; out of it--out there, alongside of Bill--"

"Easy there, matey." The Snipe glanced over his shoulder and laid his
cards face downward. "Here, let me give the bed a shake up. It'll ease
yer."

"It'll make me quiet, you mean. Plucky deal you care about easin' me,
any of yer!"

"Get out with yer nonsense! Dan didn' mean it." The Snipe slipped an
arm under the invalid's head and rearranged the pillow of skins and
gunny-bags.

"He didn't, didn't he? Let him say it then . . ."

The Gaffer read on, his lips moving silently. Heaven knows how he had
acquired this strayed and stained and filthy little demi-octavo with the
arms of Saumarez on its book-plate--"The Sixth Volume of Letters writ by
a Turkish Spy, who liv'd Five-and-Forty Years Undiscovered at Paris:
Giving an Impartial Account to the _Divan_ at _Constantinople_ of the
most remarkable Transactions of Europe, And discovering several
_Intrigues_ and _Secrets_ of the _Christian_ Courts (especially of that
of _France_)," etc., etc. "Written originally in _Arabick_. Translated
into _Italian_, and from thence i