The men clung to one another peering. A sickening, sly lurch of the ship nearly sent them overboard in a body. Belfast howled ‘Here goes!’and leaped down. Archie followed cannily, catching at shelves that gave way with him, and eased himself in a great crash of ripped wood. There was hardly room for three men to move. And in the sunshiny blue square of the door, the boatswain's face, bearded and dark, Wamibo's face, wild and pale, hung over -- watching.
Together they shouted: ‘Jimmy! Jim!’From above the boatswain contributed a deep growl: ‘You....Wait!’In a pause, Belfast Page 49
entreated: ‘Jimmy, darlin' are ye aloive?’ The boatswain said: ‘Again! All together boys!’ All yelled excitedly.
Wamibo made noises resembling loud barks. Belfast drummed on the side of the bulkhead with a piece of iron. All ceased suddenly. The sound of screaming and hammering went on thin and distinct -- like a solo after a chorus.
He was alive. He was screaming and knocking below us with the hurry of a man prematurely shut up in a coffin. We went to work. We attacked with desperation the abominable heap of things heavy, of things sharp, of things clumsy to handle. The boatswain crawled away to find somewhere a flying end of a rope; and Wamibo, held back by shouts: -- ‘Don't jump!....
Don't come in here, muddle-head!’ -- remained glaring above us -- all shining eyes, gleaming fangs, tumbled hair; resembling an amazed and half-witted fiend gloating over the extraordinary agitation of the damned. The boatswain adjured us to ‘bear a hand,’and a rope descended. We made things fast to it and they went up spinning, never to be seen by man again. A rage to fling things overboard possessed us. We worked fiercely, cutting our hands, and speaking brutally to one another. Jimmy kept up a distracting row; he screamed piercingly, without drawing breath, like a tortured woman; he banged with hands and feet. The agony of his fear wrung our hearts so terribly that we longed to abandon him, to get out of that place deep as a well and swaying like a tree, to get out of his hearing, back on the poop where we could wait passively for death in incomparable repose. We shouted to him to ‘shut up, for God's sake.’ He redoubled his cries. He must have fancied we could not hear him. Probably he heard his own clamour but faintly. We could picture him crouching on the edge of the upper berth, letting out with both fists at the wood, in the dark, and with his mouth wide open for that unceasing cry. Those were loathsome moments. A cloud driving across the sun would darken the doorway menacingly. Every movement of the ship was pain. We scrambled about with no room to breathe, and felt frightfully sick. The boatswain yelled down at us: -- ‘Bear a hand! Bear a hand! We two will be washed away from here directly if you ain't quick!’Three times a sea leaped over the high side and flung bucketfuls of water on our heads. Then Jimmy, startled by the shock, would stop his noise for a moment -- waiting for the ship to sink, Page 50perhaps -- and began again, distressingly loud, as if invigorated by the gust of fear. At the bottom the nails lay in a layer several inches thick. It was ghastly. Every nail in the world, not driven in firmly somewhere, seemed to have found its way into that carpenter's shop. There they were, of all kinds, the remnants of stores from seven voyages. Tin-tacks, copper tacks (sharp as needles), pump nails, with big heads, like tiny iron mushrooms;nails without any heads (horrible); French nails polished and slim. They lay in a solid mass more inabordable than a hedgehog. We hesitated yearning for a shovel, while Jimmy below us yelled as though he had been flayed.
Groaning, we dug our fingers in, and very much hurt, shook our hands, scattering nails and drops of blood. We passed up our hats full of assorted nails to the boatswain, who, as if performing a mysterious and appeasing rite, cast them wide upon a raging sea.
We got to the bulkhead at last. Those were stout planks.
She was a ship, well finished in every detail -- the Narcissus was.
They were the stoutest planks ever put into a ship's bulkhead -- we thought -- and then we perceived that, in our hurry, we had sent all the tools overboard. Absurd little Belfast wanted to break it down with his own weight, and with both feet leaped straight up like a springbok, cursing the Clyde shipwrights for not scamping their work. Incidentally he reviled all North Britain, the rest of the earth, the sea -- and all his companions. He swore, as he alighted heavily on his heels, that he would never, never any more associate with any fool that ‘hadn't savee enough to know his knee from him elbow.’ He managed by his thumping to scare the last remnant of wits out of Jimmy. We could hear the object of our exasperated solicitude darting to and fro under the planks, now here, now there, in a puzzling manner. He squeaked as he dodged the invisible blows. It was more heartrending even than his yells. Suddenly Archie produced a crowbar.
He had kept it back; also a small hatchet. We howled with satisfaction.
He struck a mighty blow and small chips flew at our eyes. The boatswain above shouted: -- ‘Look out! Look out there. Don't kill the man.
