Since her remarks to me about having been a sailor and living in a black hole of a fo’castle, she had said little to me. Her mother still kept to her bunk during meal hours, and I had escaped facing her, but the girl’s studied coldness more than outweighed this pleasure.
I could hardly understand why she should object to a man who was a sailor, when her father and grandfather had both worked their way from the fo’castle to the quarter-deck. But, then, the woman’s reasoning, I argued, was peculiar to herself and none the less obstinate for being illogical.
Although I was at first put out of temper by her remarks, I now saw that she devoted her attention almost entirely to young Brown when we were at meals together. This attachment appeared much more fitting for a girl of her years and position.
I cursed myself heartily for being such a fool as to allow her a moment in my thought. What was I but a mate and a man nearly twice her age? In any case, I had no right to expect her to be more than half-civil to me.
As the weather grew warmer, after we picked up the northeast trade, it was pleasant on deck during the hours of the evening dog-watch. Captain Crojack was easy enough on his mates during good weather, so Brown and I got in the habit of sitting on the combings of the after hatch in the evenings smoking and spinning yarns while waiting for eight bells to strike.
Supper always took up nearly half of the two hours, and it was hardly worth while to turn in for the remainder of the watch if the weather was good.
O’Toole thought as the rest of us did upon this subject, for he invariably came on deck after his supper at the second table and smoked a short, black pipe while he spun his yarns.
People often wonder why sailors find it necessary to smoke and lie, after eating a hearty meal of salt junk and hardtack.
It is just as impossible to explain this as it is to tell why coal-heavers, or longshoremen, invariably put the receipts for their truckloads into their hats. It is for some purpose that the sailor is so constituted. Perhaps good, hard, all-around lying promotes the digestion of salt food, by getting the system so thoroughly saturated with deception that the stomach believes the junk fresh. Whatever the purpose, it is probably a good one.
