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!