On this sultry afternoon a group of seamen, clad in nothing but shirt and breeches, were lolling, lying crouching on the deck forward, circled around Bulger.  Seated on an upturned tub, he was busily engaged in baiting a hook.  Tired of the “Irish horse” and salt pork that formed the staple of the sailors’ food, he was taking advantage of the calm to fish for bonitos, a large fish over two feet long, the deadly enemy of the beautiful flying fish that every now and then fell panting upon the deck in their mad flight from marine foes.  The bait was made to resemble the flying fish itself, the hook being hidden by white rag stuffing, with feathers pricked in to counterfeit spiked fins.

As the big seaman deftly worked with iron hook and right hand, he spun yarns for the delectation of his mates.  They chewed tobacco, listened, laughed, sneered, as their temper inclined them.  Only one of the group gave him rapt and undivided attention—­a slim youth, with hollow sunburnt cheeks, long bleached hair, and large gleaming eyes.  His neck and arms were bare, and the color of boiled lobsters; but, unlike the rest, he had no tattoo marks pricked into his skin.  His breeches were tatters, his striped shirt covered with party-colored darns.

“Ay, as I was saying,” said Bulger, “’twas in these latitudes, on my last voyage but three.  I was in a Bristol ship a-carryin’ of slaves from Guinea to the plantations.  Storms!—­I never seed such storms nowhere; and contrariwise, calms enough to make a Quaker sick.  In course the water was short, an’ scurvy come aboard, an’ ‘twas a hammock an’ round shot for one or the other of us every livin’ day.  As reg’lar as the mornin’ watch the sharks came for their breakfast; we could see ’em comin’ from all p’ints o’ the compass; an’ sure as seven bells struck there they was, ten deep, with jaws wide open, like Parmiter’s there when there’s a go of grog to be sarved out.  We was all like the livin’ skellington at Bartlemy Fair, and our teeth droppin’ out that fast, they pattered like hailstones on the deck.”

“How did you stick ’em in again?” interrupted Parmiter, anxious to get even with Bulger for the allusion to his gaping jaw.  He was a thick set, ugly fellow, his face seamed with scars, his mouth twisted, his ears dragged at the lobes by heavy brass rings.

“With glue made out of albacores we caught, to be sure.  Well, as I was saying, we was so weak there wasn’t a man aboard could reach the maintop, an’ the man at the wheel had two men to hold him up.  Things was so, thus, an’ in such case, when, about eight hells one arternoon, the lookout at the masthead—­”

“Thought you couldn’t climb?  How’d he get there?” said the same skeptic.

“Give me time, Parmiter, and you’ll know all about the hows an’ whys, notwithstandin’s and sobeits.  He’d been there for a week, for why? ’cos he couldn’t get down.  We passed him up a quarter pint o’ water and a biscuit or two every day by a halyard.