Time after time the keg under his arm slipped and fell in the soft powdery shingle, and he had to bend his stiffened and aching body to pick it up again, while the terrible cracked voice of Pet Salt, railing in the most fearful language, rang in his ears.
But he went on. Once he fell and cut his head on a breakwater stone, and the old woman kicked him with her wood-shod foot and bade him rise in a tone that had fear in it as well as command.
Once they saw a lantern in the far distance and Pet made him crouch and wait silent till it passed on. Again and again he felt that he must break away and regain his lost courage, but always the fear of the dark desolateness and the awful old woman prevented him, and he went on meekly.
How at last he managed to climb up the rope ladder and scramble on to the deck of the Pet and then down the hatchway to the stifling cabin and bunk-room below he did not know. However, he did it and fell through the doorway into Ben Farran’s presence in a fainting condition.
When he recovered himself the air was full of a strange sickening odour mixed with the fumes of steaming rum.
He looked round him curiously. The room was very small even for a boat and marvellously dirty and untidy.
A few rags were bundled together in a corner, forming a rude sort of bed, and an old iron stove smoked and spat in another. On the top of this stood an iron bowl, and it was from this Blueneck decided that the strange smell came.
In a corner by the stove lay Ben Farran, snoring loudly with his mouth open.
Blueneck looked at him curiously. He had been a fine big man, he judged, and had had some strength and comeliness, but much rum had changed him and he sprawled there a most ungainly, loathsome figure. His shoulders were bent till he lost any pretension to height, his jaw was weak and drooping, and great blue pouches of flesh hung under his eyes. This, combined with an enormous stomach and bent podgy legs, gave him a great resemblance to a fat toad.
Blueneck looked away and turned his attentions to himself. He found that his outer garments had been removed and that his arms and legs were covered with a black-greenish paste. He looked at them in surprise and disgust and began to rub off the caked mixture as fast as he could. But he noticed that his stiffness had left him and that he felt as well and strong as he had done the night before he had his fight with Joe Pullen.