Now he was giving his last orders. "Ough! You, Knowles! Call all hands
at four. I want... Ough!... to heave short before the tug comes. Look
out for the captain. I am going to lie down in my clothes.... Ough!...
Call me when you see the boat coming. Ough! Ough!. The old man is sure
to have something to say when he gets aboard," he remarked to Creighton.
"Well, good-night.... Ough! A long day before us to-morrow.... Ough!...
Better turn in now. Ough! Ough!"

Upon the dark deck a band of light flashed, then a door slammed, and Mr.
Baker was gone into his neat cabin. Young Creighton stood leaning over
the rail, and looked dreamily into the night of the East. And he saw in
it a long country lane, a lane of waving leaves and dancing sunshine.
He saw stirring boughs of old trees outspread, and framing in their arch
the tender, the caressing blueness of an English sky. And through the
arch a girl in a light dress, smiling under a sunshade, seemed to be
stepping out of the tender sky.

At the other end of the ship the forecastle, with only one lamp burning
now, was going to sleep in a dim emptiness traversed by loud breathings,
by sudden short sighs. The double row of berths yawned black, like
graves tenanted by uneasy corpses. Here and there a curtain of gaudy
chintz, half drawn, marked the resting-place of a sybarite. A leg hung
over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight out with
a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two light snores,
that did not synchronise, quarrelled in funny dialogue. Singleton
stripped again--the old man suffered much from prickly heat--stood
cooling his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on his bare and
adorned chest. His head touched the beam of the deck above. The nigger,
half undressed, was busy casting adrift the lashing of his box, and
spreading his bedding in an upper berth. He moved about in his socks,