His little place, with the door ajar
on a long hook, was always full of tobacco smoke. We spoke through the
crack cheerfully, sometimes abusively, as we passed by, intent on our
work. He fascinated us. He would never let doubt die. He overshadowed
the ship. Invulnerable in his promise of speedy corruption he trampled
on our self-respect, he demonstrated to us daily our want of moral
courage; he tainted our lives. Had we been a miserable gang of wretched
immortals, unhallowed alike by hope and fear, he could not have lorded
it over us with a more pitiless assertion of his sublime privilege.
CHAPTER THREE
Meantime the _Narcissus_, with square yards, ran out of the fair
monsoon. She drifted slowly, swinging round and round the compass,
through a few days of baffling light airs. Under the patter of short
warm showers, grumbling men whirled the heavy yards from side to side;
they caught hold of the soaked ropes with groans and sighs, while their
officers, sulky and dripping with rain water, unceasingly ordered them
about in wearied voices. During the short respites they looked with
disgust into the smarting palms of their stiff hands, and asked one
another bitterly:--"Who would be a sailor if he could be a farmer?" All
the tempers were spoilt, and no man cared what he said.
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