The cook wiped his face with a dirty cotton rag, which,
afterwards, he tied round his neck.--"That's how them firemen do in
steamboats," he said, serenely, and much pleased with himself.
"My work is as heavy as theirs--I'm thinking--and longer hours.
Did you ever see them down the stokehold? Like fiends they
look--firing--firing--firing--down there."
He pointed his forefinger at the deck. Some gloomy thought darkened his
shining face, fleeting, like the shadow of a travelling cloud over the
light of a peaceful sea. The relieved watch tramped noisily forward,
passing in a body across the sheen of the doorway. Some one cried,
"Good-night!" Belfast stopped for a moment and looked at Jimmy,
quivering and speechless with repressed emotion. He gave the cook a
glance charged with dismal foreboding, and vanished. The cook cleared
his throat. Jimmy stared upwards and kept as still as a man in hiding.
The night was clear, with a gentle breeze. Above the mastheads the
resplendent curve of the Milky Way spanned the sky like a triumphal
arch of eternal light, thrown over the dark pathway of the earth. On the
forecastle head a man whistled with loud precision a lively jig, while
another could be heard faintly, shuffling and stamping in time.
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