"I guess I'll rig up the triangle this morning and scrape the mainmast," he said. "It's a good chance."
The captain squinted aloft, but said nothing.
"I'll start at the foot," continued the mate, as if in answer to unspoken criticism. "Maybe it'll breeze up before the men get much above the deck."
"All right," said the captain, and went on whistling.
"There isn't a breath of air," said Medbury. "I believe everything's dead."
"Nothing dead about this roll," replied Captain March.
"Well, it ought to be," replied the mate, and walked forward.
"I don't know as the crew's going to rise up and call him blessed when he orders them aloft on that job in a swell like this," said the captain to Drew; "but then, as I said, I don't know."
Then the barefooted crew came aft with buckets and brooms to wash down the decks, and he and Drew went below. When they came back to the deck, after breakfast, two men were at the grindstone sharpening their knives, and a third was scraping a bright pin-rail forward. Medbury sat on the forward end of the house, making double-crown knots in the ends of new man-ropes. He did not look up as Hetty and the minister came and stood over him, watching his work. Captain March came past the group in his morning walk.
"You're not going to scrape the mainmast, eh?" he said, as he went by. His eyes twinkled.