The Argosy — page 69: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE VOYAGE OF THE PULO WAY. 261 evidently one of our coolie passengers forward—a fellow who towered head and shoulders above Macshiel. Though thinking it strange, I passed on, apparently oblivious of their proximity, and getting to the leeward of the deckhouse, filled and lit a pipe. Here, a minute or so after, the captain joined me. “Glass is going down,’’ he began, in his most civil manner. ‘‘I think we shall have a blow before morning. Listen ;’’ and he pointed aloft, as though to locate the strange whistling of the wind. ‘‘Isn’t that a warning as plain as any spoken word ?”’ : ‘True, to the ear that understands the language.”’ He laughed rather bruskly. ‘““A man can’t spend twenty years on the coast and not understand the lingo.’’ ‘* Have you been out here so long ?’”’ “So long that the ill smell of China has got into my blood. You don’t know what that is—eh? Whendid you come out?”’ ‘‘ Three years ago.”’ ‘Ah! Then you can still smell a Chinaman in the dark ?”’ I admitted as much, but with an intonation which might easily have been questioned. He, failing to notice it, continued : “Ves twenty years of coast work, sailing these blasted seas till I some- times wish they’d open and swallow me up. Twenty years of toil, and twenty —forty fortunes made for other men, and devil a stick or stone of my own. That’s the story of my life, young man. Well, what do you think of it?”’ ‘‘ Candidly, not much.’’ He laughed almost boisterously. It was a mad, reckless laugh, which set me wondering. : ‘No, one could hardly call it successful. A dog’s life aboard, and a fool’s life ashore. A drunken bout: then carry him on board and make the brute work. And so he works for months, with but one object in view—the drunken bout once again. ‘That’s the romance of the sea, my young friend —this foul pond of the devil’s making.” Needless to say I was much amazed at this outburst, for not alone were the words strangely fierce and incongruous, but his manner of uttering them had all the snarling savageness of a snapping beast. ‘Fate,’ said I sententiously, ‘‘has dropped us underneath. We may eruinble, and scratch, and howl; but if we don’t behave ourselves, the man above will probably kick out our brains.’’ “T intend to have a kick, nevertheless,’’ said he, his voice sounding strangely desperate. ‘Well, be careful. ‘The man above is shod witlriron.”’ ‘‘Blast him, yes. But I’ll tear the iron from his heel and fling it in his face. I’m sick of it, I tell you—sick of working for other people.”’ ‘The common lot,’’ said I. ‘“But mine no longer.”’ I laughed a little at this unexpected outburst. ‘Well, captain, we must make the best of our opportunities.’ Eomichook (So)