“Here I am. Here I’ve been ever since six o’clock. Didn’t want to interrupt the pleasant conversation. If you like to put in half of your watch below jawing with a dear friend, that’s not my affair. Funny taste though.”
“He isn’t a bad chap,” said the impartial Powell.
The mate snorted angrily, tapping the deck with his foot; then: “Isn’t he? Well, give him my love when you come together again for another nice long yarn.”
“I say, Mr. Franklin, I wonder the captain don’t take offence at your manners.”
“The captain. I wish to goodness he would start a row with me. Then I should know at least I am somebody on board. I’d welcome it, Mr. Powell. I’d rejoice. And dam’ me I would talk back too till I roused him. He’s a shadow of himself. He walks about his ship like a ghost. He’s fading away right before our eyes. But of course you don’t see. You don’t care a hang. Why should you?”
Mr. Powell did not wait for more. He went down on the main deck. Without taking the mate’s jeremiads seriously he put them beside the words of Mr. Smith. He had grown already attached to Captain Anthony. There was something not only attractive but compelling in the man. Only it is very difficult for youth to believe in the menace of death. Not in the fact itself, but in its proximity to a breathing, moving, talking, superior human being, showing no sign of disease. And Mr. Powell thought that this talk was all nonsense. But his curiosity was awakened. There was something, and at any time some circumstance might occur . . . No, he would never find out . . . There was nothing to find out, most likely. Mr. Powell went to his room where he tried to read a book he had already read a good many times. Presently a bell rang for the officers’ supper.
CHAPTER SIX—. . . A MOONLESS NIGHT, THICK WITH STARS ABOVE, VERY DARK ON THE WATER
In the mess-room Powell found Mr. Franklin hacking at a piece of cold salt beef with a table knife. The mate, fiery in the face and rolling his eyes over that task, explained that the carver belonging to the mess-room could not be found. The steward, present also, complained savagely of the cook. The fellow got things into his galley and then lost them. Mr. Franklin tried to pacify him with mournful firmness.
“There, there! That will do. We who have been all these years together in the ship have other things to think about than quarrelling among ourselves.”
Mr. Powell thought with exasperation: “Here he goes again,” for this utterance had nothing cryptic for him. The steward having withdrawn morosely, he was not surprised to hear the mate strike the usual note. That morning the mizzen topsail tie had carried away (probably a defective link) and something like forty feet of chain and wire-rope, mixed up with a few heavy iron blocks, had crashed down from aloft on the poop with a terrifying racket.