"Stick together, boys," roared Davis. Belfast tried to make himself
heard. Knowles grinned in a slow, dazed way. A short fellow with a
thick clipped beard kept on yelling periodically:--"Who's afeard? Who's
afeard?" Another one jumped up, excited, with blazing eyes, sent out
a string of unattached curses and sat down quietly. Two men discussed
familiarly, striking one another's breast in turn, to clinch arguments.
Three others, with their heads in a bunch, spoke all together with a
confidential air, and at the top of their voices. It was a stormy chaos
of speech where intelligible fragments tossing, struck the ear. One
could hear:--"In the last ship"--"Who cares? Try it on any one of us
if-------."
"Knock under"--"Not a hand's turn"--"He says he is all right"--"I always
thought"--"Never mind...." Donkin, crouching all in a heap against the
bowsprit, hunched his shoulderblades as high as his ears, and hanging
a peaked nose, resembled a sick vulture with ruffled plumes. Belfast,
straddling his legs, had a face red with yelling, and with arms thrown
up, figured a Maltese cross. The two Scandinavians, in a corner, had
the dumbfounded and distracted aspect of men gazing at a cataclysm.
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