up to the poop rail and looking
towards the bows, "what's the row there?"

"Bedad, sorr," shouted back the boatswain, yelling out the words as
loudly as he could, like Captain Gillespie, and putting his hands to his
mouth to prevent the wind carrying them away seaward, "there's a did man
in the forepake!"

CHAPTER NINE.

OUR STOWAWAY TUMBLES INTO LUCK.

"A man in the forepeak--eh?" yelled out Captain Gillespie, all his
complacency gone in a moment, his voice sounding so loudly that it
deadened the moaning of the wind through the shrouds and the creaking of
the ship's timbers, whose groans mingled with the heavy thud of the
waves against her bows as she breasted them, and the angry splash of the
baffled billows as they fell back into the bubbling, hissing cauldron of
broken water through which the noble vessel plunged and rolled, spurning
it beneath her keel in her majesty and might. "A man in the forepeak,
and dead, is he, bosun? I'll bet I'll soon quicken him into life again
with a rope's-end!"

He muttered these last words as he hastily scrambled down the poop
ladder and along the weather side of the main-deck towards the
forecastle, making his way forward with an activity which might have
shamed a younger man.

Mr Mackay at once tumbled after him, and I followed too, as quickly as
I could get along and the motion of the ship would allow me, being
buffeted backwards and forwards like a shuttlecock between the bulwarks
and deck-house in my progress onwards, as well as drenched by the spray,
which came hurtling inboards over the main-chains from windward as it
was borne along by the breeze, wetting everything amidships and soaking
the main-sail as if buckets of water were continually poured over it,
although the air was quite dry and the sun still shining full upon its
swelling surface.

"Begorra, he's as did as a door-nail, sorr," I heard Tim Rooney saying
on my getting up at last to the others, who were grouped with a number
of the crew round the small hatchway under the forecastle leading down
to the forehold below, the cover of which had been slipped off leaving
the dark cavity open. "I ownly filt him jist move once, whin I kicked
him wid me fut unknowns to me, as I wor sayin' about stowin' the cable."

"Dead men don't move," replied the captain sharply, the hands round
grinning at the boatswain's Irish bull. "Some of you idlers there, go
down and fetch this stowaway up and let us see what he's ma