“Yes, I must look to my medicines,” she replied to Swope.  “I see they will be required.”  There was no active hate in her voice, or in her eyes, but she looked at the man much as one looks at some loathsome yet inevitable object—­a snake, or a toad.  And she turned away without further words, and descended to the cabin.  Swope watched her departure with a half smile parting his beard and mustache.  Oh, how I longed to be able to wipe that sneer from his mouth with my clenched fist!

CHAPTER VII

The Cockney relieved me at the wheel, at one bell, when the mates turned the crowd to after a short half hour for dinner.  Oh, what a changed Cockney from yestereve!  He came slinking meekly along the lee side of the poop.  When he took over the wheel he had hardly spirit enough in him to mumble over the directions I gave him.  His eyes were puffed half closed, and his lips were cut and swollen.  Gone was the swanking, swaggering Cockney who had paraded before the Swede’s bar.  Instead there was only this cowed, miserable sailorman taking over the wheel.  That Cockney had suffered a cruel double cross when he drank of the black bottle, and was hoisted over the Golden Bough’s rail.  Yesterday he was a great man, the “Knitting Swede’s” chief bully, with the hard seafare behind him, and with unlimited rum, and an easy, if rascally, shore life ahead of him.  To-day he was just a shell-back outward bound, with a sore head and a bruised body; a fellow sufferer in the foc’sle of a dreaded ship, mere dirt beneath the officers’ feet.  Such a fall!  Keenly as I had disliked the man yesterday, to-day I was sorry for him.  The more sorry because I felt that the Jocose Swede had come near having me as the butt of his little joke, instead of Cockney.

I scurried forward, intent upon dinner.  I drew my whack from the Chinaman in the gallery, and bolted it down in the empty foc’sle.  It was a miserable repast, a dish of ill-cooked lobscouse, and a pannikin of muddy coffee, and I reflected glumly that I had joined a hungry ship as well as a hot one.

I finished the last of that mysterious stew, and then filled and lighted my pipe.  I felt sure I would be allowed the half hour dinner spell the rest of the crowd had enjoyed, and I relaxed and puffed contentedly, determined to enjoy my respite to the last minute.  For the sounds from the deck indicated a lively afternoon for all hands.  But something occurred to interrupt my cherished “Smoke O,” something that caused me to sit up suddenly and stiffly on the bench, while my pipe fell unheeded from my slackened mouth, and an unpleasant prickle ran over my scalp and down my spine.

I have already mentioned that the Golden Bough had a topgallant forecastle; that is, the crew’s quarters were away forward, in the bows of the ship, beneath the forecastle head.  It was a gloomy cavern; the bright day of outdoors was a muddy light within.