‘A bale of blankets, sir.’
‘Can you guess how it originated?’
‘I expect that the man Crabb——’ began the mate.
The captain started and stared.
‘The man Crabb,’ continued Mr. Prance, ‘whom we imagined dead and buried, sir, has been skulking in the hold’—old Keeling frowned with amazement—‘and I have no doubt he fired the bale whilst lighting his pipe.’
‘Crabb in the hold!’ cried the skipper; ‘do you speak of the man whom we buried, sir?’
‘The same, sir,’ answered Mr. Prance.
Old Keeling gazed about him with a gaping face. ‘But he died, sir, and was buried,’ he exclaimed. ‘I read the funeral service over him, and saw, sir—Mr. Prance, I saw with my own eyes the hammock fall from the grating after it had been tilted.’
The chief officer said something in reply which I did not catch, owing to the noise amongst the men who were yet in the hold and the talk of the sailors round about. He then walked to the boatswain’s berth followed by the captain, that old marline-spike’s eyes might bear witness to the assurance that the Crabb who had leapt up out of the fore-hatch in a smother of smoke was the same Crabb who had been solemnly interred over the ship’s side some weeks before.
Mr. Cocker came wriggling out of the hold and got on to the deck alongside of me to superintend the restowal of the broken-out goods.