Not certain to what quarter of the Worcestershire the nautical term applied, I started forward. Another bellow brought me to a halt.
“You —,” but never mind the details. The new order, expurgated, amounted to the information that I was to wait in the waist until the captain had seen me.
I descended, snatched a draught of tepid water at the pump, and leaned against the port bulwarks. Too hungry to be greatly terrified, I had really taken new heart at the mate’s threat. “Colombo” he had said. Until then I had feared the Worcestershire, like most East-Indiamen, would put in at Aden; and unwelcome passengers, turned over to the British governor there, were invariably packed off on the first steamer to Port Saïd.
An hour, two hours, three hours, I stood in the waist, returning the stares of every member of the ship’s company, Hindu or English, whose duties or curiosity brought him to that quarter. With the sounding of eight bells a steward returned from the galley with a can of coffee. Once started, an endless procession of bacon, steaks, and ragoûts filed by under my nose. To snatch at one of the pans would have been my undoing. I thrust my head over the bulwarks, where sea breezes blew, and stared at the sand billows of the Arabian coast. Not until the denizens of the “glory-hole” had returned to their duties did I venture to turn around once more. “Peggy,” the stewards’ steward, peered furtively out upon me.
“Eh! Mite,” he whispered; “’ad anythink to eat yet?”
“Not lately.”
“Well, come inside. There’s a pan o’ scow left to dump.”
Very little of it was dumped that morning.
I had barely returned to my place when four officers descended the starboard ladder to the waist. They were led by the mate, immaculate now, as the rest, in a snow-white uniform. His vocabulary, too, had improved. A “sir,” falling from his lips, singled out the captain. My hopes rose at once. The commander was the exact antithesis of his first officer. Small, dapper, almost dainty of figure and movement, his iron-gray hair gave setting to a face in which neither toleration nor authority had gained the mastery.
With never a sign of having seen me, the officers mounted the poop ladder and strolled slowly aft, examining as they went. “Peggy” appeared at the door of the “glory-hole” with a dish cloth in his hands.