The Nigger of the Narcissus | Page 6

him! He never upset no tar; I was there!" shouted
somebody. The two Norwegians sat on a chest side by side, alike and
placid, resembling a pair of love-birds on a perch, and with round eyes
stared innocently; but the Russian Finn, in the racket of explosive
shouts and rolling laughter, remained motionless, limp and dull, like a
deaf man without a backbone. Near him Archie smiled at his needle. A
broad-chested, slow-eyed newcomer spoke deliberately to Belfast
during an exhausted lull in the noise:--"I wonder any of the mates here
are alive yet with such a chap as you on board! I concloode they ain't
that bad now, if you had the taming of them, sonny."
"Not bad! Not bad!" screamed Belfast. "If it wasn't for us sticking
together.... Not bad! They ain't never bad when they ain't got a chawnce,
blast their black 'arts...."
He foamed, whirling his arms, then suddenly grinned and, taking a
tablet of black tobacco out of his pocket, bit a piece off with a funny
show of ferocity. Another new hand--a man with shifty eyes and a
yellow hatchet face, who had been listening open-mouthed in the
shadow of the midship locker--observed in a squeaky voice:--"Well, it's
a 'omeward trip, anyhow. Bad or good, I can do it on my 'ed--s'long as I
get 'ome. And I can look after my rights! I will show 'em!" All the
heads turned towards him. Only the ordinary seaman and the cat took
no notice. He stood with arms akimbo, a little fellow with white
eyelashes. He looked as if he had known all the degradations and all the
furies. He looked as if he had been cuffed, kicked, rolled in the mud; he
looked as if he had been scratched, spat upon, pelted with
unmentionable filth... and he smiled with a sense of security at the
faces around. His ears were bending down under the weight of his
battered felt hat. The torn tails of his black coat flapped in fringes about
the calves of his legs. He unbuttoned the only two buttons that
remained and every one saw that he had no shirt under it. It was his
deserved misfortune that those rags which nobody could possibly be

supposed to own looked on him as if they had been stolen. His neck
was long and thin; his eyelids were red; rare hairs hung about his jaws;
his shoulders were peaked and drooped like the broken wings of a bird;
all his left side was caked with mud which showed that he had lately
slept in a wet ditch. He had saved his inefficient carcass from violent
destruction by running away from an American ship where, in a
moment of forgetful folly, he had dared to engage himself; and he had
knocked about for a fortnight ashore in the native quarter, cadging for
drinks, starving, sleeping on rubbish-heaps, wandering in sunshine: a
startling visitor from a world of nightmares. He stood repulsive and
smiling in the sudden silence. This clean white forecastle was his
refuge; the place where he could be lazy; where he could wallow, and
lie and eat--and curse the food he ate; where he could display his talents
for shirking work, for cheating, for cadging; where he could find surely
some one to wheedle and some one to bully--and where he would be
paid for doing all this. They all knew him. Is there a spot on earth
where such a man is unknown, an ominous survival testifying to the
eternal fitness of lies and impudence? A taciturn long-armed shellback,
with hooked fingers, who had been lying on his back smoking, turned
in his bed to examine him dispassionately, then, over his head, sent a
long jet of clear saliva towards the door. They all knew him! He was
the man that cannot steer, that cannot splice, that dodges the work on
dark nights; that, aloft, holds on frantically with both arms and legs,
and swears at the wind, the sleet, the darkness; the man who curses the
sea while others work. The man who is the last out and the first in when
all hands are called. The man who can't do most things and won't do the
rest. The pet of philanthropists and self-seeking landlubbers. The
sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all about his rights, but
knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the unexpressed faith,
of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship's company. The
independent offspring of the ignoble freedom of the slums full of
disdain and hate for the austere servitude of the sea.
Some one cried at him: "What's your name?"--"Donkin," he said,
looking round with cheerful effrontery.--"What are you?" asked another
voice.--"Why, a sailor like you, old man," he replied, in a tone