.. < chapter xliii 10  HARK >


    !  Hist!  Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?

It was the middle-watch; a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a

cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the

scuttle-butt near the taffrail.  In this manner, they passed the buckets to

fill the scuttle-butt.  Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts

of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet.

From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence, only broken by

the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly

advancing keel.  It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the

cordon, whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a

Cholo, the words above.  Hist!  did you hear that noise, Cabaco?  Take the

bucket, will ye, Archy?  what noise d'ye mean?  There it is again --under the

hatches --don't you hear it --a cough--it sounded like a cough.  Cough be

damned!  Pass along that return bucket.  There again --there it is! --it sounds

like two or three sleepers turning over, now!  Caramba!  have done,

shipmate, will ye?  It's the three soaked biscuits ye eat for supper turning

over inside of ye --nothing else.  Look to the bucket!

.. <p 195 >


     Say what ye will, shipmate; I've sharp ears.  Aye, you are the chap, ain't

ye, that heard the hum of the old Quakeress's knitting-needles fifty miles at

sea from Nantucket; you're the chap.  Grin away; we'll see what turns up.

Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody down in the after-hold that has not yet

been seen on deck; and I suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too.  I

heard Stubb tell Flask, one morning watch, that there was something of that

sort in the wind.  Tish!  the bucket!

.. <p 195 >