.. that the cattle-boss
had to help on a bit, by pulling him the few first yards by his curly
horns.
* * * * *
As we swam by in the fading day, a pale ghost of a moon was already up.
Ghostly rows of knee-ing trees stood out like live things in the
river....
Under the night, off at sea, what with the mooing and baaing through all
the ship, it seemed like an absurd farmyard that had somehow got on the
ocean.
* * * * *
There were two quarters for the men ... a place under the forecastle
head, forward--as well as the after-quarters. Nippers and I had been
separated--he staying aft, while I took up my bunk forward.
* * * * *
But the men on the boat, the few that stick in my memory as distinct
personages:
There was the bloated, fat Scotch boy, whom we called just Fatty, a
sheepherder by calling. He had signed on for the trip, to take care of
the sheep on the upper deck;
There was a weak, pathetic cockney, who died of sun-stroke;
The ex-jockey, a bit of a man with a withered left arm--made that way
from an injury received in his last race, when his mount fell on him;
There was the West Indian Negro, a woolly, ebony wisp of a creature, a
great believer in ghosts (he who thought we stowaways were ghosts when
we hid under the bunk).
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