He said nothing: the situation was beyond mere oaths, but wrath surged in him like a flood.
Around the for'ard house, walking with measured steps, came Mr. Fant, the mate of the Etna, and accosted him.
"Sobered up, have ye?" said Mr. Fant.
"Yes, sir," said Goodwin.
"That's right," said Mr. Fant, smiling, surveying him with an appearance of gentle interest. "Knock-out drops?" he inquired.
"Yes, sir," answered Goodwin again, watching him.
"Ah!" Mr. Fant shook his head. "Well, you're all right now," he said.
"Stick yer head in a bucket an' ye'll be ready to turn to."
Mr. Fant had his share in the fame of the Etna; he was a part of her character. Goodwin, though his mind still moved slowly, eyed him intently, gauging the man's strange and masked quality, probing the mildness of his address for the thing it veiled. He saw the mate of the Etna as a spare man of middle-age, who would have been tall but for the stoop of his shoulders. His shaven face was constricted primly; he had the mouth of an old maid, and stood slack-bodied with his hands sunk in the pockets of his jacket. Only the tightness of his clothes across his chest and something sure and restrained in his gait as he walked hinted of the iron thews that governed his lean body; and, while he spoke in the accents of an easy civility, his stony eyes looked on Goodwin with an unblinking and remorseless aloofness. It was not hard to imagine him, when the Etna, with her crew seduced or drugged to man her, should be clear of soundings and the business of the voyage put in shape, when every watch on deck would be a quaking ordeal of fear and pain, and every watch below an interval for mere despair.
The vision of it made Goodwin desperate.
"I haven't signed on, sir," he protested. "I've been shanghaied here.
This ain't."