Eight bells had gone, the morning watch was done, it was almost time to eat, and so Kieran, the pump-man, laid aside the tools of his berth and came strolling aft; and swinging down the long gangway he sang:
"There was a girl,—I knew her well,—a girl in Zanzibar—
A bulgeous man of science said you bet her avatar
Was Egypt's Cleopatra—and from off a man-o'-war
I met her first—and O, her eyes! A blazing polar star!
From which you couldn't head away no more than you could fly—
Gypsy one of Zanzy! For you who wouldn't die!"
It was one of those fine days in the Gulf of Mexico. Abreast of the ship the Florida reefs, low-crested, ragged, and white, loomed above the smooth sea.
Kieran contemplated the line of reefs; presently he leaned over the taffrail and stared down at the whirling propeller; from the screws his gaze shifted to the whirling water above and about them, and thence to the tow in their wake. He put his head to one side, studied the spectacle of the straining hawser and the wallowing barge on the end of it, as if it were a mysterious problem.