'Mayn't a man use his eyesight aboard this bloody ship?' said the seaman, coming to a halt.
'Go forward!' exclaimed the captain, stiffening himself at the rail.
The man seemed to hesitate, then went slowly towards the forecastle, audibly muttering. This man's name was Joseph Dabb.
When he was close to the deck-house, a sailor, who was squatting in the shadow of it, exclaimed gruffly:
'What was he a-saying of?'
'Asked me what I was a-staring at because I was looking at him.'
'S'elp me, all angels!' exclaimed the squatting figure, after spitting right across the deck, 'if I don't feel sometimes like cutting the scab's heart out of him! We're not men in his sight. We're muck. He thinks of us as muck, and he talks of us as muck. He speaks to us as if we was muck, and it's muck he's shipped aboard this vessel for us muck to eat.'
He stood up, and the whites of his eyes glistened in the reflected moonlight that whitened off the edges of the stay-foresail, as he turned his gaze aft, where the figure of the captain walked. A man came out of the deck-house and joined the company. Immediately after, a fourth man approached from the forecastle, and stood listening.
'They've been a-yarning about us half my trick,' said Dabb. 'The captain said this pleasuring was a-spoiling of us.'
All four united in a low, dismal laugh, which would have been a loud, defiant, mirthless roar but for the sleepers in the deck-house, hard by which they were talking. Sleep is counted a sacred thing at sea.