Days merge into days, and weeks slip into weeks, and I, for
one, can never remember the day of the week or month.
The Elsinore is never totally asleep. Day and night, always, there
are the men on watch, the look-out on the forecastle head, the man at
the wheel, and the officer of the deck. I lie reading in my bunk,
which is on the weather side, and continually over my head during the
long night hours impact the footsteps of one mate or the other,
pacing up and down, and, as I well know, the man himself is for ever
peering for'ard from the break of the poop, or glancing into the
binnacle, or feeling and gauging the weight and direction of wind on
his cheek, or watching the cloud-stuff in the sky adrift and a-scud
across the stars and the moon. Always, always, there are wakeful
eyes on the Elsinore.
Last night, or this morning, rather, about two o'clock, as I lay with
the printed page swimming drowsily before me, I was aroused by an
abrupt outbreak of snarl from Mr. Pike. I located him as at the
break of the poop; and the man at whom he snarled was Larry,
evidently on the main deck beneath him.
Pages:
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218