Strolling for'ard I noted the sailors being routed out of the
forecastle by Sundry Buyers, for ever tenderly pressing his abdomen
with his hands. Another man was helping Sundry Buyers at routing out
the sailors. I asked Mr. Pike who the man was.
"Nancy--my bosun; ain't he a peach?" was the answer I got, and from
the mate's manner of enunciation I was quite aware that "Nancy" had
been used derisively.
Nancy could not have been more than thirty, though he looked as if he
had lived a very long time. He was toothless and sad and weary of
movement. His eyes were slate-coloured and muddy, his shaven face
was sickly yellow. Narrow-shouldered, sunken-chested, with cheeks
cavernously hollow, he looked like a man in the last stages of
consumption. Little life as Sundry Buyers showed, Nancy showed even
less life. And these were bosuns!--bosuns of the fine American
sailing-ship Elsinore! Never had any illusion of mine taken a more
distressing cropper.
It was plain to me that the pair of them, spineless and spunkless,
were afraid of the men they were supposed to boss.
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