'By Gott, yaw, dot vould be easy if der physic vhas rum,' answered the man with a ghastly smile, continuing to stare up at us with an occasional snapping blink of his eyelids. 'But der vater in der bilge—und I gif you all der rats of der ship to be drownt in her too—vas sweet gombared to him.'
Mr. Owen drew back and the sufferer ceased to speak.
'A nasty attack of sub-acute rheumatism,' the doctor said behind me.
The rest of the sailors were on deck: this man sat alone on his chest in the bottom of that well, and I pitied the poor solitary wretch from my heart when I considered how every plunge and sharp movement of the ship must serve to give a new twist to all those red-hot corkscrews he complained of. It was too dark below to distinguish more than the man's figure. I observed the fluctuations of a thin, watery yellow light, and tasted in the occasional puffs of thick atmosphere that came up a horrid smell of burning fat.
'Do they cook down there?' I asked.
'It is the fumes of the forecastle lamp Miss Otway smells,' said the doctor. 'It's fed with the slush the sailors make their puddings with.'
I wished to ask several questions, but the roar of the wind and the sea silenced me. Mr. Owen took me by one arm, Mrs. Burke by the other, and we carefully made our way into what is called the ship's head, past a huge anchor and a little capstan, and ropes taut as harp-strings, and vibrating with the wild drumming music of the sails whose corners they confined. The huge bowsprit shot out directly ahead of us. It ran tapering, and was like the finger of a giant pointing, inviting the eye to the deep blue distant recess towards which we were rushing, and which opened like the whole morning upon the sight each time our bows soared to the foaming summit.
They say that the finest sight in the world is a ship in full sail, and perhaps it is, but I doubt if there's one in a thousand, one in a hundred thousand, who has ever seen such a thing; and the reason is that a ship in full sail means studding sails out on both sides, and every stitch of the rest of her canvas set, and this figure she can make only under conditions of wind so rare as to render the spectacle, as I understand it, something outside the experience of anyone, sailor or landsman, that ever I have conversed with.
But to my mind there is a finer sight than a ship in full sail: and that is the view of the vessel you are on board of rushing at you, thundering at you, for ever charging into the seething troughs of brine with the white foam scaling her wet and flashing bow, you meanwhile perched out beyond her, watching her coming at you.