"Two men short!" commented Candlass in the afternoon, and went aft to the cabin to look for them, found one on the way, behind a bale of hay, peered at him as if wondering what he was doing there, balancing carefully with loose knees, taking hand from pocket only to grab and hang on by a protruding end of barricade. He eyed him as a man may eye a newly-bought puppy that has gone in between the sofa's end and the wall. The youth got up, scrambled out as best he could, hauled himself to his feet. Candlass spoke never a word, but bowed to him in the attitude of one listening for a whisper, mock-commiserating, and the youth dragged himself forward to find that his fellows did not want him, had fallen to work passing the hay themselves, and were inclined to treat him as if he was in the way. He had the air as of pleading to be allowed to do something. Candlass, meanwhile, walked on into the cabin, zig-zagged across, looking for his other missing man.
There were two of the lower deck hobbledehoys there. He waggled a thumb at the door, and they got up and crawled out, but he did not follow them; he went up on deck instead, to hunt out the man who was missing from his own deck in particular. The sheep sniffled and bleated occasionally under securely-lashed dodgers that now covered the tops of all the pens. They saw his feet and thrust out their black faces, wrinkled their noses, shivered and withdrew. It was near their feed time. (Mike and Cockney, with two or three others, saw to them daily on their way back, after having tended the cattle.) Candlass tilted his body along, looking left and right to see where his man might be hiding, the ship ever and again pausing in the midst of a rise, pausing much as men on deck did at a more violent and unexpected roll and kick. Some greater wave, at such times, had caught her fair, and smashing upon her hull as on a cliff, raced whirling along the length of her, shot up her side, soared thinly there beyond the bulwark, to be immediately blown wide, as is the top of a fountain in the wind, scudding and rattling along the decks. Tarpaulins had been rigged entirely across her, below the bridge, to protect the sheep on the after deck; and as far as to that barrier did Candlass now strut, tilting and balancing. And there, in a space between two sheep-pens, beside a ventilator, he saw a pair of boot-soles, bent down and grabbed at the legs beyond them, and the face of the missing man looked up at him—green. It was sea-sickness. Candlass stooped low.
"Sick?" he said.
The man's eyes rolled. He clung desperately to the ventilator.
"Don't fall overboard, don't want to lose a man. Savvey?"
The man tried to nod; his whole body sagged forward in that effort.
"You lie on your back when you ain't actually being sick," Candlass roared into his ear. "Savvey?"
Again the man tried to nod and at least succeeded in making his head go up and down instead of being powerless to keep it from doing aught but rolling left and right.
"Don't fall overboard," Candlass counselled again, and lurched away, muttering to himself: "Sick all right."
But most of the men enjoyed the gale. It was something doing. And when, next morning, the pickpocket-faced youth sat up ready to give his shout of: "Call me in another hour, Rafferty, and bring me me shaving water," his voice failed. He looked round the cabin; he had been one of the shirkers yesterday.