Led by Mr. Pike and watching our chance between seas, we searched the
deck and rails between the forecastle-head and the for'ard-house and
found no devils. The mate stepped into the forecastle doorway, and
his light-stick cut like a dagger through the dim illumination of the
murky sea-lamp. And we saw the devils. Nosey Murphy had been right.
There were three of them.
Let me give the picture: A drenched and freezing room of rusty,
paint-scabbed iron, low-roofed, double-tiered with bunks, reeking
with the filth of thirty men, despite the washing of the sea. In a
top bunk, on his side, in sea-boots and oilskins, staring steadily
with blue, bitter eyes, Andy Fay; on the table, pulling at a pipe,
with hanging legs dragged this way and that by the churn of water,
Mulligan Jacobs, solemnly regarding three men, sea-booted and bloody,
who stand side by side, of a height and not duly tall, swaying in
unison to the Elsinore's down-flinging and up-lifting.
But such men! I know my East Side and my East End, and I am
accustomed to the faces of all the ruck of races, yet with these
three men I was at fault.
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