Then, when I repeated the latter part of the lady's message, "Tell him . . . to look behind him when he walks in the dark," his features hardened again, and I heard him mutter, "So, that is his game!"
"What is?" I asked.
He did not answer for a moment, and I turned away towards my bunk. But at that he reached out a detaining hand.
"You are a big man, Shreve," he said. "Not such a difference in our sizes but that a man might mistake us after dark. Keep your weather eye lifted, lad; you, too, must look behind when you walk in the dark."
"And what shall I look for?" asked I.
"Death," he said.
CHAPTER X
Came morning, but not the lady.
And the foc'sle was in sad need of her ministrations. Quite half the crew needed salves and bandages for their bruises and cuts, and there was, besides, a more serious case demanding attention.
When the starboard watch was called at four o'clock, we heard a low, insistent moaning in the port foc'sle. The man who called us said that the little squarehead—the lad Swope had manhandled—had again fallen afoul the masters. The hurts Swope had inflicted prevented the boy moving about as quickly as Mister Fitzgibbon desired, so the bucko had laid him out and walked upon him during the mid-watch. When he was through, the lad had crawled on his hands and knees into the foc'sle, and collapsed.