It was incomprehensible and disturbing;
a gibberish of emotions, a frantic dumb show of speech pleading for
impossible things, promising a shadowy vengeance. It sobered Donkin into
a scrutinising watchfulness.
"Yer can't oller. See? What did I tell yer?" he said, slowly, after a
moment of attentive examination. The other kept on headlong and unheard,
nodding passionately, grinning with grotesque and appalling flashes
of big white teeth. Donkin, as if fascinated by the dumb eloquence and
anger of that black phantom, approached, stretching his neck out with
distrustful curiosity; and it seemed to him suddenly that he was looking
only at the shadow of a man crouching high in the bunk on the level with
his eyes.--"What? What?" he said. He seemed to catch the shape of some
words in the continuous panting hiss. "Yer will tell Belfast! Will yer?
Are yer a bloomin' kid?" He trembled with alarm and rage, "Tell yer
gran'mother! Yer afeard! Who's yer ter be afeard more'n any one?" His
passionate sense of his own importance ran away with a last remnant of
caution. "Tell an' be damned! Tell, if yer can!" he cried. "I've been
treated worser'n a dorg by your blooming back-lickers.
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