‘Suppose she should have the doctor, soldiers, and the rest of them on board,’ said Will.
‘Butler,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates with energy, ‘I swear you have nothing to fear. You are innocent; you have saved life; you have witnesses——’
Tom stamped on the deck and turned his back with a gesture that was like saying he had settled that question in previous talks with the mate.
They were again howling out a chorus in the cuddy; the tobacco smoke rose like steam into the moonshine through both open skylights; shouts for drink and for pipe-lights were incessant. Tom, hearing a sound of scuffling coming from the main-deck, went to the rail and stood looking. He returned and said: ‘A dozen of them have staggered out for air, I suppose; the freshness has proved too strong, and every man dropped as though knocked on the head. There they lie, dead-drunk on the decks.’
‘That vessel sits without life,’ said the mate, looking at the sea under the moon. ‘I’ve been watching her. She’s either hove to or there’s something wrong.’
Our own languid motion had drawn the little craft out of the brilliant reflection. She now hung on the margin of it, scarce distinguishable but for the faint light her sails made. I suppose she was about five miles distant; certainly she had not seemed to move to the extent of her own length since we caught sight of her.
Our canvas was now hollowing in. The white cloths came to the mast softly and shook the dew upon them on the deck. The sea was grown glassy under the moon, and round about were ice-like windings of tremorless water. The breeze was falling fast, and the heat that came in a sort of fold like a succession of swells out of the gathering calm was heightened to every sense by a vast play of shooting stars over our mast-heads. Tom stepped to the skylight to observe the time; it was something after ten.
The uproar was at its height again below. A hundred voices seemed to be singing a hundred different songs at once. In the midst of this, half a dozen figures came into the companion-way. They all talked as they ploughed up the steps, shoving one another in their drunken scramble to keep steady. The first of them fell over the coaming and lay laughing and cursing; the next tripped over him, but recovered himself, with a mouthful of oaths, and with a stroke of his foot rolled the prostrate man aside. The fellow laughed like one choking, then lay motionless, and before the others had come up he was snoring.
One of these men was Barney Abram. He stood in the companion-way, holding on and looking about him with his figure stooped.
‘Here’s Butler!’ exclaimed a man, talking brokenly and hiccoughing. ‘Come below, my rooster. Ain’t ye longer one of us, old drummer? Come and drink. Don’t make it all greediness downstairs. Take your whack, my lobscouser, and let’s hear you sing.’