At last Ferrier said, "Well, Tom, we had a heavy turn in the autumn. If
we go this time we'll go together, and I've often wondered what that
could be like. What do men say when they meet the last together? Whew-w!
How I hate death. The monster! The beastly cold privation. To leave even
a North Sea smack must be bitter."
The patients were listening; the man with concussion was gone, cured,
and his place was held by a burly man who had tried (as heavy fellows
will) to haul his own fourteen stone up to the main-boom during a
breeze, in order to repair a reef-earring. The vessel came up to the
wind, and the jar flung poor Ebenezer Mutton clash on to the deck.
Luckily he did not land on his skull, but he had a dislocated ankle.
Ebenezer whispered, "I heern you talkin' about the gale, sir, and you're
right; we've got somethin' to come. I have a left arm that can beat any
glass ever was seen. I come down from the jaws of the gaff just when we
was snuggin' her before the gale in '66, and my arm went in four places.
Ever since then that there arm tells every change as plain as plain can
be. Yes, sir, it's hard to die, even out off a North Sea smack, as you
say. Just before the '66 breeze I used often to think, 'Shall I go
overboard?' but when we was disabled, and skipper told us 'twas every
man for hisself, I looked queer. My arm says there's bad a-comin', and I
know you don't skeer easy, or a wouldn't tell you."
A hollow sound filled the whole arch of the sky; it was a great,
bewildering sound like a cry--an immense imprecation of some stricken
Titan.
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