Eight bells came at last, signaling the release of the port watch from the deck and the tension of the officer’s presence.  The forecastle received them, the stronghold of their brief and limited leisure.  The unkempt, weather-stained men, to whom the shifting seas were the sole arena of their lives, sat about on chests and on the edges of the lower bunks, at their breakfast, while the pale sunlight traveled to and fro on the deck as the Villingen lurched in her gait.  Conroy, haggard and drawn, let the coffee slop over the brim of his hook-pot as he found himself a seat.

“Well, an’ what did he punch ye for this time?”

It was old Slade who put the question, seated on a chest with his back against the bulkhead.  His pot was balanced on his knee, and his venerable, sardonic face, with the scanty white hair clinging about the temples, addressed Conroy with slow mockery.

Conroy hesitated.  “It was over coilin’ away some gear,” he said.  Slade waited, and he had to go on.  He had misunderstood the mate’s order to coil the ropes on the pins, where they would be out of the way of the deck-washing, and he had flemished them down on the poop instead.  It was the mistake of a fool, and he knew it.

Slade nodded.  “Ye-es,” he drawled.  “You earned a punch an’ you got it.  But he kicked you, too, didn’t he?”

“Kicked me!” cried Conroy.  “Why, I thought he was goin’ to kill me!  Look here—­look at this, will you?”

With fumbling hands he cast loose his belt and flung it on the floor, and plucked his shirt up so as to leave his side bare.  He stood up, with one arm raised above his head, showing his naked flank to the slow eyes of his shipmates.  His body had still a boyish delicacy and slenderness; the labor of his trade had not yet built it and thickened it to a full masculinity of proportion.  Measured by any of the other men in the watch, it was frail, immature, and tender.  The moving sunlight that flowed around the door touched the fair skin and showed the great, puffed bruises that stood on it, swollen and horrid, like some vampire fungus growing on the clean flesh.

A great Greek, all black hair and eyeball, clicked softly between his teeth.

“It looks like—­a hell!” he said softly, in his purring voice.

“Dem is kicks, all right—­ja!” said some one else, and yet another added the comment of a heavy oath.

Old Slade made no comment, but sat, balancing his hook-pot of coffee and watching the scene under his heavy white brows.  Conroy lowered his arm and let the shirt fall to cover the bruises.

“You see?” he said to Slade.

“I see,” answered the other, with a bitter twist of his old, malicious lips.  Setting down the pot which he held, he stooped and lifted the belt which Conroy had thrown down.  It seemed to interest him, for he looked at it for some moments.

“And here’s yer knife,” he said, reaching it to the youth, still with his manner of mockery.  “There’s some men it wouldn’t be safe to kick, with a knife in their belts.”