g stupidly or scornfully. Over the white
rims of berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the bodies were
lost in the gloom of those places, that resembled narrow niches for
coffins in a whitewashed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder.
Archie, with compressed lips, drew himself in, seemed to shrink into
a smaller space, and sewed steadily, industrious and dumb. Belfast
shrieked like an inspired Dervish:--"... So I seez to him, boys, seez
I, 'Beggin' yer pardon, sorr,' seez I to that second mate of that
steamer--'beggin' your-r-r pardon, sorr, the Board of Trade must 'ave
been drunk when they granted you your certificate!' 'What do you say,
you------!' seez he, comin' at me like a mad bull... all in his white
clothes; and I up with my tar-pot and capsizes it all over his blamed
lovely face and his lovely jacket.... 'Take that!' seez I. 'I am a
sailor, anyhow, you nosing, skipper-licking, useless, sooperfloos
bridge-stanchion, you! That's the kind of man I am!' shouts I.... You
should have seed him skip, boys! Drowned, blind with tar, he was! So..."

"Don't 'ee believe him! He never upset no tar; I was there!" shouted
somebody. The two Norwegians sat on a chest side by side, alike and
placid, resembling a pair of love-birds on a perch, and with round eyes
stared innocently; but the Russian Finn, in the racket of explosive
shouts and rolling laughter, remained motionless, limp and dull, like
a deaf man without a backbone. Near him Archie smiled at his needle. A
broad-chested, slow-eyed newcomer spoke deliberately to Belfast during
an exhausted lull in the noise:--"I wonder any of the mates here are
alive yet with such a chap as you on board! I concloode they ain't that
bad now, if you had the taming of them, sonny."

"Not bad! Not bad!" screamed Belfast. "If it wasn't for us sticking
together.... Not bad! They ain't never bad when they ain't got a
chawnce, blast their black 'arts...."

He foamed, whirling his arms, then suddenly grinned and, taking a tablet
of black tobacco out of his pocket, bit a piece off with a funny show of
ferocity. Another new hand--a man with shifty eyes and a yellow hatchet
face, who had been listening open-mouthed in the shadow of the midship
locker--observed in a squeaky voice:--"Well, it's a 'omeward trip, anyhow.
Bad or good, I can do it on my 'ed--s'long as I get 'ome. And I can look
after my rights! I will show 'em!" All the heads turned towards him.
Only the ordinary seaman a