’Twas grey—grey everywhere: the sky lead-colored, with deeper shades toward the east, where a bank of cloud blotted the coast line: the thick rain descending straight, with hardly wind enough to set the sails flapping; the sea spread like a plate of lead, save only where, to leeward, a streak of curded white crawled away from under the Godsend’s keel.
On deck, a few sailors mov’d about, red eyed and heavy. They show’d no surprise to see us, but nodded very friendly, with a smile for our strange complexions. Here again, as ever, did adversity mock her own image.
But what more took our attention was to see a row of men stretch’d on the starboard side, like corpses, their heads in the scuppers, their legs pointed inboard, and very orderly arranged. They were a dozen and two in all, and over them bent Captain Billy with a mop in his hand, and a bucket by his side: who beckon’d that we should approach.
“Array’d in order o’ merit,” said he, pointing with his mop like a showman to the line of figures before him.
We drew near.
“This here is Matt. Soames, master o’ this vessel—an’ he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Dead-drunk, that is. O the gifted man! Come up!” He thrust the mop in the fellow’s heavy face. “There now! Did he move, did he wink? ‘No,’ says you. O an accomplished drunkard!”
He paus’d a moment; then stirr’d up No. 2, who open’d one eye lazily, and shut it again in slumber.
“You saw? Open’d one eye, hey? That’s Benjamin Halliday. The next is a black man, as you see: a man of dismal color, and hath other drawbacks natural to such. Can the Aethiop shift his skin? No, but he’ll open both eyes. See there—a perfect Christian, in so far as drink can make him.”