43. CHAPTER XLIII.
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!”
“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!”
