The battens were nimbly drawn, the tarpaulin thrown aside, and some seamen stooped to raise the hatch cover. A few seconds were expended in prising and manœuvring, in the midst of which the knocking was repeated with a note of violence in it, accompanied by a general start and a growl of wonder from all hands.
‘Heave!’ cried the carpenter, and up came the cover, followed by a small cloud of blue smoke, and immediately after by the figure of the hideous sailor Crabb, who sprang from off the top of a layer of white-wood cases with a loud curse and a horrible fit of coughing.
CHAPTER XIV
CRABB
The atmosphere was still red with the sunset, though the luminary was below the horizon, and there was plenty of light to see by. An extraordinary shout went up from amongst the men at the sight of Crabb, as he leapt out of the hatch in the heart of the little cloud of smoke. Those who were on the side of the deck on to which he jumped recoiled with a positive roar of horror and fright, one or two of them capsizing and rolling over and over away from the hatch, as though they were in too great a hurry to escape to find time to get upon their legs.
I very well remember feeling the blood desert my cheek, whilst my heart seemed to come to a stand, and my breathing grow difficult at the apparition of the fellow. Crabb! Why, I had seen him lying dead in his bunk! I had heard of him as lying stitched up in a hammock on this very fore-hatch! I had beheld that same hammock flash overboard, and I had watched it lifting and frisking away astern! Who, then, was yonder hideous creature that had jumped in hobgoblin fashion out of the hold? Could he be the buried Crabb himself?
There is no lack of things to frighten people withal in this world; but I cannot conceive of any shock comparable to the instant consternation felt by a man who meets another of whose death he is profoundly assured, and whom he has been thinking of as a corpse, dead and buried, for any number of days gone by. The general horror, the prodigious universal amazement which held the mate and me and others amongst us speechless and motionless, as though we had been blasted and withered up by some electric bolt from heaven, scarcely endured a minute; yet by that handful of seconds was the picture of this amazing incident framed. I see Crabb now as he let fall his arm from his face when his fit of choking coughing ceased: and I recall the blind wild look of his distorted eyes, as he slowly turned his countenance round, as though the mild evening light was violently oppressive to his vision after the days of blackness passed in the hold. His repulsive countenance was dark with dirt and grime. I observed many scratches upon his arms, which were naked to the elbows, as though he were fresh from squeezing and boring through some ugly jagged intricacies of stowed commodities. His shirt hung in rags upon him; there were many rents in his loose trousers; and there was blood upon his exposed chest, from a wound seemingly made by the sharp head of a nail or some edge of iron-sheathed case.
‘Seize that man, bo’sun,’ suddenly roared Mr. Prance, leaping out of his benumbed condition of astonishment in a way to make one think of a bull sweeping out through a hedge: ‘handcuff him, and shut him up in your berth for the present. Get the head-pump rigged—the hose passed along. Jump for buckets, and stand by to pass them down.’
The powerful hand of the boatswain closed like a vice upon Crabb’s neck. I thought to see a struggle, but the ugly sailor seemed weak and dazed, and stepped passively to the boatswain’s berth into which my friend shot him, following and closing the door, to conceal, I suppose, the operation of manacling the man from the eyes of the half-stupefied Jacks.