A dirty lamp was burning in the fo’c’sle, the ill-trimmed wick smoking and flaring in the wind. On the floor sat three men, half naked, with a keg of rum between them, and a tin cup passing from hand to hand. In one of the bunks, a man, whose back had been broken by a falling spar, lay groaning and biting the coat that covered him, in a paroxysm of pain. Near him on an upturned bucket another fellow sat with his head between his hands, as though the dread of death were heavy on his soul.
Jeffray stood on the threshold, holding his pistols behind his back. The rough faces, the faces of men who drank to drown despair, were turned to him half threateningly under the light of the flaring lamp. The man in the bunk was groaning, and trying to pray. From without came the roar and ferment of the sea.
“Well, lads, tired of pumping, eh?”
They looked at him sullenly, as though resenting any authority at such an hour.
“What d’ yer want?”
“Pass the mug, Jim; let the dandy go to the devil.”
Jeffray steadied himself against the door-post, and brought his pistols from behind his back. He was cool and resolute, a man whose grimness was not to be denied.
“Drop that drink—drop it, or by Heaven, I’ll send a bullet through your body.”
The men gaped at him, huddling back a little across the floor, their eyes fixed on Jeffray’s unflinching face and the pistol that covered them.
“Drop the drink. One—two—”