At the other end of the ship the forecastle, with only one lamp burning
now, was going to sleep in a dim emptiness traversed by loud breathings,
by sudden short sighs. The double row of berths yawned black, like
graves tenanted by uneasy corpses. Here and there a curtain of gaudy
chintz, half drawn, marked the resting-place of a sybarite. A leg hung
over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight out with
a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two light snores,
that did not synchronise, quarrelled in funny dialogue. Singleton
stripped again--the old man suffered much from prickly heat--stood
cooling his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on his bare and
adorned chest. His head touched the beam of the deck above. The nigger,
half undressed, was busy casting adrift the lashing of his box, and
spreading his bedding in an upper berth. He moved about in his socks,
tall and noiseless, with a pair of braces beating about his calves.
Amongst the shadows of stanchions and bowsprit, Donkin munched a
piece of hard ship's bread, sitting on the deck with upturned feet and
restless eyes; he held the biscuit up before his mouth in the whole fist
and snapped his jaws at it with a raging face.
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