In the
flickering light from a small and very smoky sea-lamp it was a dismal
picture. No self-respecting cave-man, I am sure, would have lived in
such a hole.
Even as I looked a bursting sea filled the runway between the house
and rail, and through the doorway in which I stood the freezing water
rushed waist-deep. I had to hold on to escape being swept inside the
room. From a top bunk, lying on his side, Andy Fay regarded me
steadily with his bitter blue eyes. Seated on the rough table of
heavy planks, his sea-booted feet swinging in the water, Mulligan
Jacobs pulled at his pipe. When he observed me he pointed to pulpy
book-pages that floated about.
"Me library's gone to hell," he mourned as he indicated the flotsam.
"There's me Byron. An' there goes Zola an' Browning with a piece of
Shakespeare runnin' neck an' neck, an' what's left of Anti-Christ
makin' a bad last. An' there's Carlyle and Zola that cheek by jowl
you can't tell 'em apart."
Here the Elsinore lay down to starboard, and the water in the
forecastle poured out against my legs and hips.
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