night
cried loud and commanding:--"Haul the spanker out." The group before the
door vanished out of the light. They could be heard tramping aft while
they repeated with varied intonations:--"Spanker out!"... "Out spanker,
sir!" Donkin remained alone with Jimmy. There was a silence. Jimmy
opened and shut his lips several times as if swallowing draughts of
fresher air; Donkin moved the toes of his bare feet and looked at them
thoughtfully.

"Ain't you going to give them a hand with the sail?" asked Jimmy.

"No. If six ov 'em ain't 'nough beef to set that blamed, rotten spanker,
they ain't fit to live," answered Donkin in a bored, far-away voice, as
though he had been talking from the bottom of a hole. Jimmy considered
the conical, fowl-like profile with a queer kind of interest; he was
leaning out of his bunk with the calculating, uncertain expression of
a man who reflects how best to lay hold of some strange creature that
looks as though it could sting or bite. But he said only:--"The mate will
miss you--and there will be ructions."

Donkin got up to go. "I will do for 'im some dark night; see if I
don't," he said over his shoulder.

Jimmy went on quickly:--"You're like a poll-parrot, like a screechin'
poll-parrot." Donkin stopped and cocked his head attentively on one
side. His big ears stood out, transparent and veined, resembling the
thin wings of a bat.

"Yuss?" he said, with his back towards Jimmy.

"Yes! Chatter out all you know--like... like a dirty white cockatoo."

Donkin waited. He could hear the other's breathing, long and slow; the
breathing of a man with a hundredweight or so on the breastbone. Then he
asked calmly:--"What do I know?"

"What?... What I tell you... not much. What do you want... to talk about
my health so..."

"It's a blooming imposyshun. A bloomin', stinkin', first-class
imposyshun--but it don't tyke me in. Not it."

Jimmy kept still. Donkin put his hands in his pockets, and in one
slouching stride came up to the bunk.

"I talk--what's the odds. They ain't men 'ere--sheep they are. A driven
lot of sheep. I 'old you up... Vy not? You're well orf."

"I am... I don't say anything about that...."

"Well. Let 'em see it. Let 'em larn what a man can do. I am a man, I
know all about yer...." Jimmy threw himself further away on the pillow;
the other stretched out his skinny neck, jerked his bird face down at
him as though pecking at the eyes. "I am a man. I've seen the inside of
ever