The cat purred on the windlass. Then James Wait
had a fit of roaring, rattling cough, that shook him, tossed him like
a hurricane, and flung him panting with staring eyes headlong on his
sea-chest. Several men woke up. One said sleepily out of his bunk:
"'Struth! what a blamed row!"--"I have a cold on my chest," gasped
Wait.--"Cold! you call it," grumbled the man; "should think 'twas
something more...."--"Oh! you think so," said the nigger upright and
loftily scornful again. He climbed into his berth and began coughing
persistently while he put his head out to glare all round the
forecastle. There was no further protest. He fell back on the pillow,
and could be heard there wheezing regularly like a man oppressed in his
sleep.
Singleton stood at the door with his face to the light and his back to
the darkness. And alone in the dim emptiness of the sleeping forecastle
he appeared bigger, colossal, very old; old as Father Time himself,
who should have come there into this place as quiet as a sepulchre to
contemplate with patient eyes the short victory of sleep, the consoler.
Yet he was only a child of time, a lonely relic of a devoured and
forgotten generation.
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