Supported on all sides, he hung his head.--"Are you
better?" they asked. He glared at them from under his eyebrows with
large black eyes, spreading over his chest the bushy whiteness of a
beard long and thick.--"Old! old!" he repeated sternly. Helped along,
he reached his bunk. There was in it a slimy soft heap of something that
smelt, as does at dead low water a muddy foreshore. It was his soaked
straw bed. With a convulsive effort he pitched himself on it, and in the
darkness of the narrow place could be heard growling angrily, like an
irritated and savage animal uneasy in its den:--"Bit of breeze...
small thing... can't stand up... old!" He slept at last, high-booted,
sou'wester on head, and his oilskin clothes rustled, when with a
deep sighing groan he turned over. Men conversed about him in quiet,
concerned whispers. "This will break'im up"... "Strong as a horse"...
"Aye. But he ain't what he used to be." In sad murmurs they gave him up.
Yet at midnight he turned out to duty as if nothing had been the matter,
and answered to his name with a mournful "Here!" He brooded alone more
than ever, in an impenetrable silence and with a saddened face.
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